


Sing Once Again With Me

by theoddling



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, M/M, Manipulative Relationship, Murder, Phantom of the Opera AU, this is going to get dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23406436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoddling/pseuds/theoddling
Summary: After leaving Geralt's side, Jaskier finds himself among the orchestra at a famed music hall, and secretly under the tutelage of a Ghost.A Phantom of the Opera AU in which Jaskier is Christine Daae and Valdo Marx is the Phantom.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion/Valdo Marx
Comments: 11
Kudos: 55





	1. Overture

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: anyone who genuinely likes the Phantom and thinks Christine should have ended up with him should probably stop here because I am not pulling any punches. Much like the original story, it’s going to be strangely romantic but its also going to clearly pretty fucked up relationship-wise. WE DO NOT LET MEN GET AWAY WITH BEING SHITTY JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN SING PRETTILY

Geralt shouldered his way to the front of the room. Immediately he flagged the auctioneer, placing a bid on the item in his hands. 

“Do I hear thirty?” the little man asked, looking about the collected crowd. 

None of them lifted a hand, perhaps too afraid of the witcher’s glare to act. One woman, though conservatively dressed in black, her hair just as silver as his own, locked eyes with him and he was momentarily stunned by recognition. 

The bang of the auctioneer’s gavel drew his attention back to the room. 

“Sold, to the White Wolf of Rivia! Thank you my good sir.”

He dropped the coins into the auctioneer’s hands and gently took the instrument, cradling it as if it was the most precious thing in all his life.

The woman gave him a little nod. He inclined his head in return and quickly left.

~

He sat beside Roach on a grassy hill, overlooking the city, Filavandrel’s lute across his knees. 

‘Every detail just as I remember,’ he thought, staring down at it.

Experimentally, he gave it a gentle strum. Somehow, after all this time it was still in tune, though his unskilled hands could not draw out the right notes. 

‘Only he could make you sing,’ his monologue continued. ‘I wonder, will you still play when the rest of us are dead?’

Gently he sat the instrument aside, leaning it against the small, flat stone to his right, softly brushing a hand over the faded words engraved in it. The spot had been chosen begrudgingly, a compromise.

He had hated this city for so long, especially after all that had happened…


	2. Think of Me

The showcase would be her greatest moment, a triumphant performance that would solidify her as the single greatest musician and performer that the continent had ever seen. If only these damnable stagehands could get it together. But no, instead they had put the wrong backdrop up; they had nearly dropped it on her; they had had various “accidents”, interrupting her rehearsals, some of them injuring her or her co-performers. After this latest disaster, a spill of lamp oil nearly catching her skirts on fire, she quit. She was The Countess. She did not have to put up with this incompetence.

“No! I have put up with too much in your stupid music hall! I.am.done!” She threw the elaborate hair piece that one of the maids had been trying to pin to her hair at the conductor and stormed away.

Y/N rolled her eyes and pulled a face at her retreating back. “She’s not even that good,” she hissed to Jaskier who giggled beside her. Their noise was met with a half-hearted glare from Yennefer before she swept over to the huddle where the managers fretted over what to do now that their star had departed. As soon as her back was turned, the two musicians crept closer to listen in. 

“The seats were filled. The audience was going to be huge!” one manager, Andre, cried, wringing his hands. “We’ll have to refund the pre-sales. All the money we spent advertising, wasted. We’ll be ruined.”

“Surely we can win her back,” Firman said, far more a question than the confident statement it was likely meant to be.

“No, I do not think you can,” the conductor’s thick accent muffled his words. “She is very angry. To quit on such a night.”

Yennefer watched the three men with a raised eyebrow and a condescending smirk.

“She’s not irreplaceable. Jaskier could play the part just as well. Better.” She turned to where the two young musicians were standing, now trying very hard to appear as if they hadn’t been listening.

“But he is just an orchestra member! How could he possibly?” Andre snapped.

At the same time, Y/N had seized Jaskier by the shoulders in a hug and ignoring his wide-eyed look. “You have to! You’ll be amazing! This is your shot!”

“He has been…taking lessons with one of the best tutors. Along with his natural talent, that makes him a sure bet. Let him prove it to you.”

“Yennefer would know,” the conductor added with a respectful nod toward her. “She does not take anything less than sure.”

~

Geralt wasn’t sure what had brought him into the music hall. He had just been passing through the city, not even planning to stop but having no real way around because of the surrounding cliffs. The grand, sweeping building occupied one side of the square that he and Roach rode through, lit by dozens of colored lanterns and the light from them reflecting off the gilded columns and arches so that it glittered like a gem-encrusted crown in the dying of the day. On any other day, his eyes would have swept past it without a second thought. 

Instead, he had stabled Roach and used the space to do his best to tidy himself to blend into the crowd. Still, he knew that he looked the part of the common mercenary at best, looked down upon by the well-dressed nobles and merchants who streamed into the building. He considered himself quite lucky that none of the ushers stopped him as he dropped far too much coin on a standing room ticket and slipped into the back of the grand theatre. 

The lights were doused so that only the stage could be seen. Soft music floated over the crowd, barely able to be heard over the still chattering men and women. But suddenly, a single voice cut through, accompanied by a lute as the other musicians ceased to play, and the crowd hushed. The high, clear notes of the instrument and the gentle tenor of the singer were captivating. Geralt gasped at the familiar sound.

~

Valdo watched from the shadows of the box, smug. Jaskier was doing excellently. Every note was technically perfect. And more than that, he had seen the way the crowd had stilled. Every eye was on his beautiful flower, as was deserved.

And yet…

He felt a jealous twist in his heart. 

Jaskier was his, a beautiful thing for him alone to enjoy, an instrument for him to play, a symphony for him to write. He did not want to share that with the world. 

Unless…perhaps it was time to step once more into the light, beside him. 

The other bard’s song was indeed enchanting, not nearly complex enough for his gift, but lovely still. Valdo turned his attention back to it, green eyes glinting with pride.

The song’s final notes hung in the air for a long, breathless moment before the audience rose in a cacophony of cheers and applause.

Of course it was a full house standing ovation. Jaskier deserved nothing less.

Blushing, the blue-eyed bard bowed before scurrying off into the wings. 

Valdo smiled, wide and serpentine, slipping back through his hidden door to await him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Countess was one of the most difficult creatures to create. I literally could not think of a character from the series to replace Carlotta. So I sort of mangled the Countess De Stael in a vague sort of way. But she's a minor character so...it's fine. And of course, the really, really unimportant characters just kept their identities from the original musical.


	3. Angel of Music

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This being an AU, obviously, some details will change. Otherwise, I’d just be retelling POTO with substituted names and that’s not what we’re here for. Big change number 1: at no point in the story does Jaskier believe that the being that is stalking him/has expressed a romantic/sexual interest in him is the _ghost of his father_. It’s creepy. It makes me uncomfortable. It’s a metaphor now.

“Jaskier?” Y/N breathed, not wanting to break her best friend’s quiet contemplation. 

He was tucked in a small unused part of the music hall’s dormitory, a room that she was fairly sure used to be a chapel but was now empty even of old props and other stored things. His knees were tucked up to his chin, his lute on the narrow window sill, and he seemed to be contemplating a single, flickering candle.

“That was incredible,” she said, kneeling beside him carefully.

Finally he looked up at her with a small smile.

“Truly,” she pressed, seeing the uncertainty behind his sky blue eyes. “You were perfect. I just wish I knew who he was.”

Jaskier raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Your mysterious teacher that Yenna hinted at. Has she been portalling you out to some great lutenist somewhere? Please won’t you tell me?”

He shook his head, eyes falling back to the candle. “You’ll think it’s silly.”

“I promise I won’t. When have I ever laughed at you when you weren’t laughing too?”

He took a deep breath, turning to her, their faces close enough that he barely had to speak to be heard.

“I don’t think he’s real,” Jaskier whispered.

“What?”

“My ‘tutor’ as Yennefer put it. It’s not possible for him to be real. Not like we’re real.”

Y/N frowned, giving her friend a puzzled look.

“My grandfather used to be a minstrel, before he married. Actually, he’s the one who taught me at first. He used to tell me stories about this spirit that came to him, and how it possessed him and filled him with music.”

“And you think that you’ve been taking lessons from what? The same spirit?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know if it’s the same spirit exactly. But when he was on his deathbed my grandfather told me never to turn aside my muse, that it would always be there and would get me through my darkest times, my guardian angel,” Jaskier plucked at a loose thread on his costume pants. “You remember how I was when I came here. I was empty. I had nothing left but a gaping hole in my heart.”

Y/N nodded. It had been heartbreaking to see this trembling, lost soul curled up on his bed in the dormitories at all times of day and night, always looking like he had lost something so great that the grief would consume him. It had taken weeks to get him to even care for himself properly, months to cajole him to coming to a practice. When she’d found him in this very room the first time, strumming reverently on the lute which had lay in the chest at the end of his bed for so long, she had lingered in the doorway, not wanting to give herself up and scare him back into himself. That had been the first day they truly met and the beginning of their sibling-like friendship. 

Jaskier smiled, knowing the look in her eye and gently poked the end of her nose to recapture her attention. She wrinkled her nose at him with a giggle and an apology. 

“As I was saying,” he gave her a pointed look, “I had never felt so low, so hopeless and worthless. And then one night, I heard a voice, calling out to me. I answered; I had nothing to lose after all. It was the angel of music that my grandfather spoke of, I’m sure of it. He was so kind to me, guiding me out of my own misery, teaching me, helping me, supporting me. He has been ever since.”

“So you’re saying that the reason you’ve become an unfairly good musician, even better than you were to begin with, is just…because of your muse? Or some mysterious spirit?”

“Yes. Both. I can’t explain it any more clearly than that.”

“Jaskier, I love you, but I hope I am the only person you’ve ever told that to. Anyone else will have you hauled off to an asylum. Next you’ll be telling me this place is really haunted.”

“I’m not mad Y/N.” There was a fierceness in his eyes that made her flinch, burned by his anger.

“I…I know you’re not Jaskier, I’m sorry. I never meant to imply. But that sounds like something out of the ballads we play, or one of the productions. Those stories aren’t real.”

Jaskier froze, looking around. “Don’t say that. He is everywhere. He’s here even now, all around us.”

She reached down to clasp his hand comfortingly; she had seen most of Jaskier’s moods, but in the years now that she had known him, fear had not been part of him. As they touched, she sucked in a sharp breath.

“Your hands are like ice, and I’ve never seen you so pale. Jaskier, are you alright?”

“I don’t want him to take you from me, Y/N. You are my dearest friend. So you mustn’t anger him.” His voice dropped even lower. “At times, he frightens me.”

Y/N tightened her fingers around his. “There is nothing to be scared of. I promise you.”

~

“No…No…Leave!” Yennefer snapped, brushing past the various people who stood outside Jaskier’s door waving pages to be autographed, flowers for the bard, more intimate things for the bard. She scowled at all of them, flapping her hands in a shooing gesture as if they were a flock of annoying birds, and ducked into the dressing room.

“You did very well,” she said as soon as the door had closed, taking Jaskier by the elbows to get a good look at him. He was still in most of his costume, though he had discarded the black brocade doublet and, as usual, undone half of his shirt buttons. “He will be pleased.”

Jaskier blushed at her praise. If someone had told him that he and the sorceress would become such close friends, that she would be the first he’d tell of his secret (though somehow she knew of him before Jaskier even spoke) he would have laughed himself sick. And yet, now he relied on her, alongside Y/N, and to hear her state such a matter-of-fact compliment, her second of the day even, made his heart soar as much as the applause from any audience could. 

“But actually, I came here to tell you that there’s someone from the audience who wishes to see you.”

“There are quite a few people from the audience who wish to see me,” he gestured toward the crowd on the other side of the wall. “You very succinctly got rid of them for me, which is good. For once, I’m not enamored with the idea of being accosted by adoring fans.”

“This one is not so much an adoring fan as an apologetic one. I can send him away like the rest?”

“Apolog…Yennefer are you trying to tell me that _Geralt_ is here and wishes to speak to me?!”

“Yes. I am.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Do you want me to let him in or not?”

“I…I…” Jaskier floundered. The very idea of the witcher’s presence with him, especially in this small room, after the last time they had spoken made his heart race. “I…um…yes. Okay. Sure. I’ll talk to Geralt.”

“I’ll go get him.” She vanished in the flash of a portal and Jaskier could not help but laugh. She really had walked all the way there just for the sake of sending away his unwanted admirers.

~

“I’m sorry, Songbird,” the words slipped from Geralt’s lips like a prayer as soon as he laid eyes on Jaskier again.

Yennefer cast a last look at Jaskier over Geralt’s shoulder, hesitant to leave the pair alone, before allowing her portal to close.

“Geralt,” Jaskier said, plastering on a welcoming smile. “Don’t tell me the new managers took the rumors of a ghost seriously and brought in a witcher?” He flinched at the blatantly false cheer in his voice.

Geralt stared at him, amber eyes cutting through him and all of his bluster, the same as they always did. “I was…just passing through.”

“And you suddenly felt the urge to go see a musical showcase? Something you have never had any previous interest in and in fact would have scorned if I had suggested it when we travelled together?”

“Yes.”

“Horseshit.” Jaskier glared as he planted his hands on his hips. 

Geralt growled, stepping closer to the bard who refused to back down. 

“I was passing through the city. I felt something compelling me to stop here. Maybe it was Yennefer. Or maybe, it was you.”

“Yennefer is the one your fate is tied to. It was probably her. You should go talk to her instead.”

“Yen and I made our peace already. You’re the one I still haven’t made up for hurting, Jaskier. Please…I never should have said those things to you or cast you away like that. I was angry, and hurt, and you deserved better than for me to take it out on you. Let me make it up to you.”

“You’re right, I didn’t deserve to be mistreated like that. But I should have expected it by then. You have always made a habit of cruelty.”

“If you come with me, I will do everything I can to make it up to you. Songbird… Dandelion… Jaskier,” Geralt frowned, digging for the nickname that felt right on his tongue and hesitating before he finished his plea. “I’ve missed you. Please.”

“Why now? There was plenty of time before this for you to find me and make amends. Yennefer was important enough to seek out. But no, I am an afterthought and you’ve waited until I’ve found a new life. I’ve settled here. I have a promising career. I may even be the next star of this stage, after tonight’s performance.”

“But are you happy?”

“What?” Jaskier’s eyebrows snapped down into a crease that Geralt wanted to kiss away. He pushed the feeling down.

“I asked if you were happy. If you say yes, I’ll go and leave you be.”

“And if I say no?” Jaskier asked softly.

Geralt cocked his head, looking fondly at Jaskier. “Then I’ll ask you again to forgive me and tell you that Roach is waiting for us in the stables.”

Jaskier hesitated. He was content here, but he did miss the adventure of travelling with Geralt. And more than that, he missed Geralt. If he was being honest with himself, he had forgiven the man long ago for their confrontation on the mountain, Y/N and Yennefer and even his Angel showing him that holding on to that pain was only hurting him more.

He smiled at Geralt with equal fondness, and the other man took the expression as acceptance.

“Get packed. I’ll wait for you outside,” Geralt said, tentatively reaching out, and then, unsure of what he’d planned to do, awkwardly patting Jaskier on the shoulder.

“Actually Geralt I—” 

“It will be good to have you back,” Geralt said, as he turned to leave.


	4. The Mirror/Music of the Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not a sexy writer and Music of the Night deserves something more special that I can really do, but I've done my best.

As Geralt slipped out of the room, steps lighter than Jaskier had ever seen them, the bard sighed. He stared at himself in the vanity mirror for a long time after the latch had clicked shut before dropping his head into his hands. 

The silence of the room was broken by the harsh snap of a bolt sliding closed. Jaskier’s head jerked up, looking wildly around him, but he was alone with the shadows cast by the guttering candle. His heart raced in terror.

“Who does he think he is?” a familiar voice hissed. “This witcher, this arrogant fool!”

“He meant nothing by it,” Jaskier soothed, unsure who the words were really meant for. “He’s used to me being willing to drop everything to follow him on his adventures.”  
“But you won’t. Not this time. Never again.”

“I…”

“No!” Jaskier flinched at the single, shouted word. Still, he remained anchored in place, even as he heard the doorknob rattle and Geralt call his name from the other side.

“You will not leave with him my sweet,” the voice now purred. “You belong here. You belong to me…with me.” 

“I do, of course I do,” he murmured softly. 

“Come to me, my sweet.”

A panel slid open in the back of the room, a dark doorway like the maw of some great beast and Jaskier wandered in. Cold air rushed up toward him from the narrow staircase which he followed down, down, down, deep beneath the music hall. 

He was waiting for Jaskier at the bottom, hand outstretched. In the darkness of that narrow musty passage, Jaskier could not see his face. Dressed all in black, he practically melted out of the shadows…or into them. Only a stark white half-mask stood out, giving him the countenance of a floating, shattered skull. He found himself unable to look away from the unsettling visage though it sent a chill dancing down his spine.

He was struck by a sudden, desperate fear of his Angel of Music, beating at his breast like a robin at a windowpane. 

Shaking, fingers numb and head oddly lurching, Jaskier rested his hand against the gloved and outstretched one. 

Tightly, it curled around him, grip both guiding and possessive as it drew Jaskier closer. 

They stood together in silence, one breathing in as the other breathed out. 

Jaskier closed his eyes and tried calm his racing heart.

“Sing for me,” the Angel commanded, voice so low Jaskier felt its vibration as much as heard the words.

Using his free arm to reach past Jaskier, pushing them even closer together, to light a torch, the Angel removed from its sconce and lit the way down the passage.

Unsure of what else he could do, what he else he should do, Jaskier did as he was told.

~  
The path that he was led down twisted and turned so many times, past openings they did not take and crossings that he was hurried through, that Jaskier would have been hopelessly lost even if his entire focus had been on trying to map the way. With his mind tumbling over the strange sensations he was feeling and the ballads which flowed from his lips and echoed back at him from the high ceiling, he began to wonder if he would spend the rest of his days in this underground labyrinth.

When the Angel of Music slipped into perfect, rich harmony with him from nowhere, Jaskier lost his feet, stumbling forward into the man’s slim, toned back. In the years he’d been there, all the lessons and lectures, he had never once heard the Angel sing. It was haunting, like no sound he’d ever heard before and yet somehow eerily familiar, and it tugged at the corners of his mind. 

“They say this place is haunted,” he found himself asking before he could think it through. “Are you the ghost?” he kept his voice a soft as he could and still the hall’s acoustics threw it back at him in loud, vicious mockery. 

The Angel did not make a sound.

“Please, I want to know,” Jaskier begged, “I swear on my life I won’t tell anyone.”

“Sing.” The Angel snapped and out of habit, he did.

~  
His throat felt raw and his mouth was bone dry by the time the Angel finally let him trail off the last note. The little flat-bottomed boat he now sat in bumped gently against a   
broad stone step and the Angel jumped lithely ashore. Following after him more slowly, Jaskier felt unsteady back on solid ground. As if sensing it, the Angel took him by the elbow and murmuring soft, meaningless words, led him away from the water, into a room full of hundreds of candles, objects covered in heavy velvet cloths, and a huge, shining mahogany and copper organ. Jaskier let out a soft sigh at the sight of the grand, commanding instrument and the Angel chuckled indulgently. 

In the dim light, the Angel turned from a shadow into a man. His dark curls struggled to escape the tie that bound them at the nape of his neck. His face, slim and high-cheekboned, was largely obscured by the smooth white mask that Jaskier had noted earlier and saw now was molded pristinely to his features, covering the right side of his face from hairline to lip and jaw. His eyes were starkly green, and something in them triggered a whisper in the back of Jaskier’s mind, a memory that desperately wanted to be remembered.

The Angel used the hand still on his arm to turn Jaskier, shifting them until they were entwined back to chest. With his other, he reached up, almost tentative, to caress Jaskier’s face, fingers fluttering over his jaw, skimming the pulse point where it met his neck, travelling lower to rest across his throat. The tenderness of the action mingled intoxicatingly with the barest hint of threat that it contained to leave him breathless and overwhelmed. He closed his eyes, surrendering to the feeling, the warmth against him, the arms around him, the tingling trail left by teasing touch. 

“My sweet,” the Angel purred in his ear, lips brushing its shell and air fluttering his hair. “You were even more than I expected you to be tonight. So bright, so beautiful.”  
Jaskier opened his mouth to speak but stopped when he felt the hand on his throat shift, not quite tightening, telling him the Angel for once wanted his silence, silence that he found himself happy to give.

“It has been so long since I have enjoyed music. But you, you have given it back to me. In return I have taught you, supported you, guided you, protected you. He could never do that for you. No one but I can do that for you.”

The hand not around his throat travelled lower, lacing itself with one of Jaskier’s own. Interlocked, the Angel led Jaskier meandering over himself, ghosting over collarbones and chest, leaving goosebumps in the wake. 

“I want to give you everything you deserve my sweet, sweet little thing. All you need to do is surrender to me. Turn your face away from the _garish_ light of day. Be mine and only mine.”

Jaskier’s lips parted in a sigh and he pressed his head back, into the Angel’s supportive shoulder unconsciously, lost in the words and the sensations, hyper-focused on the fingers at his airway and splayed low on his hip.

Suddenly, all contact was gone and he stumbled, weak-kneed and glassy eyed. His head spun as his lungs struggled for air.

“This is for you, my sweet, a fitting symphony,” the Angel spoke, sounding as if he were everywhere and nowhere all at once. 

The first ethereal strands of music floated through the candle-smoke air, twining and dancing tantalizingly, and Jaskier felt as if he could see them, scintillating and seductive. As they blended with the feelings from before it was almost too much. 

Desperately he looked around, trying to find something to focus on until he could regain control of himself. His eyes fell upon his Angel, as lost in the music as Jaskier had been in him. He looked achingly human in that moment and something within Jaskier snapped.

The man at the organ wavered nauseatingly in his vision, but he continued to stare, sure that figuring out the phantom’s identity was more vital than anything else he had done in his life. Glancing over at him, eyes blazing in desire, the man danced his fingers over a few keys that seemed out of place within the song, a pattern of notes Jaskier knew as well as he knew his own name, maybe better.

“Oh fuck…” he breathed, just as his knees buckled and the world went dark.


	5. Stranger Than You Dreamt It/Notes

Jaskier woke with a groan, head pounding as if with the worst hangover of his life (and he had plenty to be familiar with the feeling). But he didn’t remember drinking the night before, so why did he feel this way? The night felt blurry, and as he sat up, clutching his head, palms pressed to his eye sockets, he tried to piece it all together.

The showcase.

The standing ovation.

Geralt.

The stranger in the shadows who wasn’t a stranger. 

It all came to him in flashes. How much of it was real? He struggled to his feet, vision full of fog which turned out to be real rather than a side-effect of whatever mental effect he was under. He looked around shakily at the decadent bed he had been asleep in, which he definitely didn’t remember laying down on, and the rich velvet curtains draped over the walls of the room and the lace one over the doorway. None of this was sparking a memory and that fact made his heart beat in his throat like a trapped bird, wings fluttering desperately.

The soft notes of a piano melody that reminded him of a lullaby floated through the heavy fabric and drew him in. Gently parting the cloth, he wandered toward the source of the sound, mouth unconsciously falling open in awe of the player’s talent. 

As he rounded the corner, sitting at the piano was the man in the mask, fingers caressing the ivory keys like a lover. Cautiously, Jaskier approached. 

He remembered that the Angel had played what he had come to understand as _their_ song. Many years ago, when he was little more than a foolish child, he had fallen in love with a fellow musician student at Oxenfurt. The two had bickered and battled, refusing to acknowledge the truth behind their feelings for much of their time together, converging violently and passionately for a time whenever they finally came together, only to push away again. But through it all, there was a confession in their music, a melody than ran through every composition that only the two of them knew, that spoke the truth when they wouldn’t or couldn’t out loud. But how could it be that this spirit, this creature knew it? Why had his muse become a phantom of a time so long past?

He felt his hand shake as he reached up to caress the man’s face. He needed to see.

The man leaned into his touch with a soft sigh, eyes closed and face slack with trust. He felt his gut twist with guilt as he laid his fingers along the edge of the mask. Was he taking advantage of the other man? It didn’t matter. He _needed_ to _see_. His nails caught the edge of the smooth white porcelain and he lifted, as slow and steady as he could in the hopes that it would be unnoticed. 

Instead, the Phantom’s eyes shot open, and his hand shot out, as if at first to strike Jaskier, before quickly redirecting to cover his face where the mask had been.

“Damn you!” the Phantom roared, shoving away from the piano, startling Jaskier into a stumble.

Jaskier watched him, curled small with fear on the floor. 

He ripped a cloth off the wall, revealing a mirror and the reflection of his twisted visage. “You little viper!”

Jaskier’s mind fought against what was before him: this thing that was Valdo Marx and yet somehow not. It was not just the curls which had been pulled back instead of falling, frustratingly artfully around into his face. It was not just because he was practically gaunt in the face, already sharp features exaggerated into something little more than skin stretched over skeleton, an odd contrast to the rest of his figure which was, if anything, more muscular and defined than ever. Even the vicious blackened scarring across the side of his face which Jaskier had revealed, much to his own shock and Valdo’s rage, when he pulled off that frustrating white mask, would not have been enough to stop him from being the man Jaskier once knew. 

But his eyes, Jaskier might have once quite poetically compared to a sunny forest clearing on a summer afternoon. And now they were just cold. An icy hatred burned behind them, more vile than any of the (many, many) monsters Jaskier had ever met, more cruel than the scowl which twisted Valdo’s face. 

“Curse you!” Valdo hissed, clutching at his face, trying to cover the way his face had been marked as if it was not written across his whole being. He flew about the room in a tirade, throwing and kicking at things, the scene an obvious attempt to terrify and distract his fellow bard from his face. Finally he came to a panting halt before the silvered glass once more.

“Is this what you wanted to see?! Go on! Gaze upon my wretched face and laugh! That’s what you wanted after all! I know what I am now, but do you? This path you’ve set us on now, you will never be free of!” He delivered the speech to the mirror, but his eyes remained locked on Jaskier’s through the reflection, teeth clenched and nostrils flared, breath panting. 

He turned away again and his voice broke.

“Fear can turn to love,” he said softly, “you’ll come to see in time. You’ll have no choice unless you’d like to suffer forever. Oh Jaskier, I don’t want to make you suffer. Please don’t make me.”

Silently, trembling with unshed tears, Jaskier offered back the mask, his heart breaking.

Valdo took it, hesitating as if he thought Jaskier would whip it away at any moment. Jaskier tried to pretend he didn’t notice how the hands that reaffixed it over the scaring shook. 

“Come,” Valdo said, seizing Jaskier’s still outstretched hand to pull him roughly to his feet. “They’ll be looking for you soon.”

~

Geralt had considered breaking down the door of Jaskier’s room but thought that might upset him, not the best start to making amends. But there had been a voice in there with Jaskier, and it set Geralt’s nerves on edge. Growling as he rattled the door again and received no answer to calling out the bard’s name, he stormed off in search of Yennefer once more.

Unfortunately, she had already gone home with her wife and he didn’t know where they lived, nor would anyone help him. Greeted with glares and rude gestures, and several people spitting, he got the distinct impression he was unwelcome and it wasn’t only because he was a witcher. Finally, he stumbled upon the two bumbling managers. Before he could ask any questions they threatened to call the guard and have him arrested if he didn’t leave immediately. With a surrendering sigh, he had left and found a room at a relatively cheap inn nearby.

The following morning, he woke before dawn had fully broken and when he spoke to the innkeeper to return the key, he was given a note that had been left for him in the night. The heavy, folded parchment was closed with a raised skull in deep green wax.

A brief jolt of fear raised the hairs on his scalp as he cracked the seal, and read the short note within.

_Do not fret for dear Jaskier. The Angel of Music has taken him under wing. Leave here and do not try to take him with you. ~Opera Ghost_

No one could tell him where it came from. Growling, he threw a few coins at the innkeeper and stalked off back to the music hall, determined to see Jaskier even if he had to tear through every actor and musician within to do it.

“Where is Jaskier?” he demanded through clenched teeth when he saw the managers arguing in the foyer. 

“How should we know?” the shorter of the two, Andre he thought uncertainly, said incredulously.

“He’s not here? This note isn’t from you?”

“What note?” the taller one, Firman then, snapped. 

He thrust the paper out toward them. One of them took it, reading it aloud with confusion. They both frowned and swore under their breath.

“We had thought, hoped even, that he would be with you. You were the last person to see him. And we received these notes this morning.”

They each held up a small, folded parchment with a raised green wax skull. 

_Dear Firman,  
I expect certain conditions be met and have been lenient so far though you have failed to do so. My salary should be paid, and box five be left open for all performances from here forward. Mind yourselves and keep to an office where you belong instead of on my stage.  
~Opera Ghost_

Geralt frowned. It wasn’t a ransom. In fact, it hadn’t mentioned Jaskier at all. 

_Dear Andre,  
What a lovely showcase. Jaskier truly shined. So much so no one will miss “the Countess.” You have a true star in your midst; must you continue to employ a failure when she is well past her prime and not worth her diva attitude?  
~Opera Ghost_

This one had a bit more promise, but still wasn’t really anything to go on. There was definitely something strange going on in this place, he decided. And perhaps that, rather than the bard, was what had drawn him here. The thought made him strangely sad, and he shoved it aside. Emotions were best dealt with when alone, and only when they had become too much to keep ignoring. 

Suddenly, a woman burst in, dressed in a positively eye-scorching pink dress with what Geralt suspected was more decoration than fabric. She was followed by an entourage as she bore down on them like a galleon at full sail, face pinched with rage.

“How dare you?” she snapped. “Who do you think you are? To send me this note. To try to pretend your little bard is better than me. Me! What would you know? Rabid dogs don’t know music.” 

It took Geralt a moment to realize that she was talking to him and he reeled back slightly in surprise.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he growled back.

“Oh now you play dumb? I could have you thrown in jail and tortured for this you know. Do you know who I am?”

“No. Should I?”

She scoffed, face turning nearly the shade of her impractical attire. And then Geralt’s eyes narrowed in on the paper fluttering about in her gesticulating hand.

“Give me that.”

“Oh you want the evidence back now? Regret what you’ve done?”

“Countess,” Andre interrupted with a cajoling purr. “We did so miss you last night. And of course if this witcher has offended you in some way, we will deal with it with swift and sure justice.”

“May I see the letter? Please?” Firman asked. 

She handed it over to him, simpering and he began to read aloud.

_Your performing days are numbered. Jaskier will take your place. Be prepared for a great misfortune should you attempt to interfere. ~Opera Ghost_

Every few words, the Countess would make some confirming gesture or echo the words, in particular Jaskier’s name.

Geralt frowned. He had never heard of a ghost that communicated in letters. And what did all of this have to do with Jaskier’s disappearance? Nothing made sense. And why the hell did his chest suddenly feel so tight? It was like he was listening to the bickering humans through layers of wool. 

Suddenly, the staccato of heels on the polished marble floor cut through his disorienting haze. Yennefer, dressed resplendently in blue (he had never seen her in a real color before Y/N came along, he realized), strode into the room, commanding all attention.

“Jaskier has returned,” she stated plainly.

“No worse for wear I trust?” Firman asked, more concerned with whether the instantly popular young man could perform again at the night’s show than in his well-being.

“Where precisely is he?” Andre asked, curious and wanting to ask questions of where he’d gone. 

“I thought it best he be alone.” Yennefer’s voice made it clear that this was an order as a sorceress.

“He needed to rest,” Y/N chimed in, stepping forward to defend her wife and or her best friend if need be. Geralt jumped guiltily. He had somehow completely missed her presence until that moment.

“May I see him?” he asked softly, pleading to Yennefer with his eyes and banking on whatever affection she may have left for him.

“No,” she shook her head a little sadly. “He said he’ll see no one.”

“But will he perform? Does he expect to take my place again?” the Countess snapped bitterly.

“Here,” Yennefer said, holding up a folded paper and Geralt cursed under his breath, very quickly becoming sick of the sight of such things.

“I have a note.” She handed it off to Firman, folding her arms over her chest in a defensive challenge as he began to read.

_Gentlemen,  
You should now have received several letters. In them I have detailed how things are to be done. I do not like to be cruel, but I also will not broker fools. You have one chance to do as you are told.  
Jaskier has returned to you. I intend his career to progress. You will give him the starring role in your newest production and if the Countess must be on stage, it will be in a silent capacity.  
I shall be watching the performance. Do not disappoint.  
Should these commands be ignored, you will bring a disaster down on yourselves with no one else to blame.  
I remain,  
Your humble and obedient servant  
~Opera Ghost _

The letter, like the others, was written in flowing but unfamiliar script. As soon as the manager finished reading it, the Countess flew into a rage, and the managers practically bowed over backwards in attempt to calm her. They insisted that clearly it was some fool in love with Jaskier, perhaps ‘his witcher friend’ even who had sent the note in an attempt to flatter and appease him, charm him into their bed. They would not comply and the only one their production would star was the Countess, that Jaskier was nothing beside her talents. 

“You’re fools to scorn his word. The Angel sees, and knows, and he won’t take it kindly,” Yennefer snapped before sweeping off to her office. Y/N watched, eyes dark with concern and bit her tongue.

~

“Y/N,” Geralt said softly, catching her wrist lightly when the crowd had begun to disperse. “Can I speak to you a moment?”

Her eyes flitted briefly to where Yennefer had retreated to and the hall to the dormitories before turning back to meet his golden ones. “Fine.”

Stepping to the side, she faced him, eyes just barely narrowed enough to be noticeable, one hip cocked and hand planted firmly on it.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“You’re Jaskier’s friend, right?” he asked almost hesitantly.

“His best friend.” 

“Then can I…” he sighed through his nose. “Is he alright?”

She thought of the morning’s events. Yennefer catching Jaskier as he stumbled out of seemingly nowhere backstage. How pale and glassy eyed he’d been. The way he was practically limp as he draped over the two of them and they took him to the dormitories. The tremble in his hand when she’d patted it comfortingly after putting him to bed. His incoherent mumbling about fog and a mask and a melody. 

And then she remembered the fear from the night before. He’d seemed convinced that if either of them spoke ill of the “Angel of Music” that it would separate them, permanently. She clamped her jaw shut, not wanting to risk losing him. Geralt seemed to pick up on her tension and frowned.

“Please, I just…I want to help him if I can.” 

The softness in his voice shocked her and she made a decision.

“You know, this used to be more of a theater,” she said gesturing to the building around them. “For plays and things, operas even from time to time. The cutting edge of entertainment. And then it was nearly destroyed, and when it built back up it became a mediocre music hall. The new managers, Andre and Firman, they say they want to restore it to its glory days.”

“What does this have to do with Jaskier?”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t get your super tight leather pants in a bunch, I’m getting there.”

He huffed. 

“As I was saying, restore it to its glory days. But those glory days come with a darker side. They say this place is haunted by some phantom who, every once and a while, will begin to terrorize the theater. Accidents, fires, murder, the whole deal. The spirit can only be appeased by following its demands. Every story ends with the ingénue dying or disappearing.” She shrugged. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”

Geralt’s eyes narrowed, studying you in your excessive casualness. “Do you?”

She scoffed. “What I believe doesn’t matter.”

“Then what does? Why tell me this?”

“Let’s get one thing straight first. When Jaskier came here, it took _months_ for him to really be a person again instead of the broken down wreck you left him. And its damn miracle I ever broke through the walls Yennefer built on your account. I don’t like you. But for some reason, they both still trust you. So for their sake, I will to. But if you ever hurt either of them again, I will gut you like a fish, witcher powers or not.”

He nodded, something like respect in the glint of his eye. 

She took a deep breath, glad they both knew where they stood before she did the hardest part. 

“One of the things that helped Jaskier through was the…lessons I guess…he was taking with some mystery person. He said it was his ‘muse.’ But not in a regular romanticized ‘the thing that inspires my songs’ way. The way he talked about the ‘Angel of Music’ like it was an inhuman spirit of some kind…I don’t know…” 

A bell chimed and she jumped, not realizing how late it had gotten.

“Damn. I have to go to rehearsal. Yenna will kill me if I’m late again. Try asking around. This place has a lot of…history. Maybe ask Yennefer if you can get her. I think she stayed here a while, the city at least, somewhere between the Brotherhood and…you.”

She walked away before he could get another word in, only to turn back when she were about half way across the room. 

“Just remember,” she called, making an exaggerated ‘I’m watching you’ gesture. “You’re carp.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Differentiation from the source material in a meaningful and significant way without losing its soul is a challenge. This is why I don't AU often.


	6. Why Have You Brought Me Here?

The music hall was abuzz with activity in preparation for the next show, a multi-part performance designed to tell a story solely through the music played and equally humming with gossip. Holding court among the dancers was the chief stagehand, a drunk named Boquet. He teased and taunted the youngest ones, barely out of childhood with tales of the Ghost and his previous victims, using fancy words and heightened nerves to prey upon them and draw them close both physically and mentally as they shrieked and jumped at the slightest sounds and gravitated toward the strong-looking man.

Yennefer caught the behavior and reacted swiftly, interrupting his tale with a sharp slap to the face. 

“You would do well to shut up,” she hissed at him. “If you know the tales you know that those who run their mouths are the first to wind up dead.” Her violet eyes flashed over the dancers and she made a shooing gesture, herding her charges away. “Back to practice! Go!”

~

The night of the performance, the Countess waited in the wings to take the stage, daggers glared at Jaskier, and Y/N glared back protectively. 

“Remember your place, little toad,” she sneered at Jaskier. “There will be none of your upstaging peacockery tonight.”

Jaskier bit his lip, holding back the response that burned on the tip of his tongue.

The Countess swanned out onto the stage to begin her part, her long billowing skirts catching and causing her to stumble, though she tried to play it off. As her high, trilling voice carried out to the wings – technically fine even if it wasn’t the most pleasant of tones to hear – Jaskier peered out into the crowd. His eyes wandered over the balcony boxes in particular, having heard what the Phantom had demanded. Firman and Andre sat in box five and Jaskier swallowed nervously at their flagrant disregard, but he could not be too angry. They didn’t know the Phantom like he did, and he wasn’t even sure he knew the spirit at all. 

As he continued to scan the room, his eyes locked with golden ones lurking at the back of the crowd and he felt a relaxing of the tightness in his chest. He hadn’t had much opportunity to speak to Geralt after that first night because he had been preparing for his role, but knowing that he had stayed told Jaskier that everything would be alright in the end. Even on the worst day of his life, with Geralt there things worked out in the end. 

A voice rolled over the crowd, cutting through all else and leaving everyone in the room frozen.

“Did I not give you specific instructions?” Jaskier fought the urge to press his fingers into his ears to block out the familiar voice turned vile. “I will not repeat myself again.”

“It’s him,” Y/N breathed, looking up into the rigging of the stage where a shadowy figure loomed. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes, the Angel of Music…the Phantom of the Opera,” Jaskier returned, face pale and blue eyes round and wide, voice low and oddly sure. 

Suddenly, the Countess’s skirt train tore free, splitting up the front to reveal her undergarments at the same time as a lute string snapped, twanging horribly on the air. Jaskier looked at the carefully placed nail and the smooth coil of broken wire and knew that neither were accidents. The audience laughed as if this were all part of the show and the Countess’s face twisted in horror. With a gasp, the conductor signaled for the curtain to be dropped and the managers lept on stage.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” they called out. “We apologize for the delay, and will resume the show after a brief intermission, where the lead role will be played by…Jaskier.” They frantically signaled for him to step out on stage with them and he did so, bowing awkwardly, distraught at the idea of his success being at another’s expense. 

“In the meantime, please enjoy the lovely dancers for our show!” 

The conductor frowned and the managers gesticulated and after some grumbling, the stage and sheet music were shuffled. 

“We’ll need to get you a little more dolled up,” Andre said in a hushed tone as he led Jaskier back off stage. “Our star needs an outfit with more panache.”

~

Jaskier waited once again in the wings, this time for the dancers to finish their performance. He tried to focus on watching Y/N, who had taken up a lead role despite having given up her role in the company when she was offered an orchestra seat. But despite wanting to support his friend, he found his eyes fixed more often on the audience, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

He watched Geralt’s eyebrows knit together suddenly in a frown and the witcher began moving quickly toward the stage. The expression on his face sent a chill down Jaskier’s spine and belatedly, he became aware of screams and panic from the front of the house. He whipped his head around to the stage and felt his stomach roll with terror and revulsion. 

Laying on the stage at the dancers’ feet, as if dropped from a height, neck purpled and bloody, was Boquet. 

Yennefer appeared in a blast of air, a portal open that she only stepped part way out of. “Y/N! Jaskier! We need to go. Now.”

Y/N leapt through the swirling hole in reality, but Jaskier hesitated. 

“But Geralt…” he glanced over his shoulder, looking for the witcher. 

Yennefer sighed. “If you get yourself killed for him, Bard, I will be very pissed.”

He nodded, catching Y/N’s eye apologetically before turning away and diving into the fray. 

~

They found each other back stage. Geralt immediately grabbed the bard by the shoulders, scanning him for injuries.

“Geralt!” Jaskier cried happily at the same time Geralt growled “Jaskier, are you okay?”

Frantic, Jaskier grabbed Geralt by the hand, lacing their fingers together so they could not be separated as he began to lead the witcher onward, not sure where they were going except as far from Valdo Marx as they could get. Reality was heavy on his tongue even as Geralt fought his grasp, telling him that they were going the wrong way, that he should be taking action not running away, swearing something about professional reputation that Jaskier knew was a lie to cover up his concern for the innocent bystanders. 

“We can’t go back there Geralt! He will kill you!” Jaskier snapped as he ducked and wove through old sets and props on his way to a little used roof-access door. 

“Jaskier! Stop and tell me what the hell is going on!”

“He will find us! We have to go somewhere his eyes won’t see us. Even if he has to kill a thousand men to get to us, to get to me…” Jaskier paused, one hand on the rail. His voice dropped low, barely a whisper as he looked at his best friend with tear-filled eyes. “Geralt, I’m scared. The Phantom, he scares me.”

Geralt growled and struggled with the urge to wrap Jaskier in his arms. “There is no ‘Phantom.’ Just a man in a mask on murder spree.”

Still he allowed Jaskier to furtively duck through the low arch of the door, leading him to the roof and shutting the door behind them both. 

“There, we can talk now. I think,” Jaskier panted, fear and rush leaving him short of breath.

“Good. Explain.”

“I…I don’t know how. Geralt, I don’t know what he is or why he’s doing this. But I’ve been there, to his…world, his waking nightmare. I’ve seen his face, the one behind the mask. And I knew him once. And I don’t know if he’s some sort of creature pretending to be Valdo or if something’s happened to him or what’s going on.” Jaskier shook his head and brushed away the tears that threatened to fall. 

Geralt grimaced.

“But Geralt, I can’t…he helped me more than I could possibly say. Me! At a loss for words. His voice and his guidance, they are all that got me through that darkness. I’ve seen it in his eyes. He’s just as frightened as I was. And I can’t abandon him to it after all that, can I? Would you?”

“Jaskier…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is really a half-chapter, but "All I Ask of You" is going to be a LOT so I figured get some of this out of the way first.


	7. All I Ask of You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picking up directly from the previous chapter.

“Tell me what to do Geralt?” Jaskier begged.

Geralt found himself frozen, and not because of the chill, rainy night. His breath fogged in the air before him as his mind raced, trying to figure out the right answer to give. He felt like it needed to say a thousand things and none of them were the right place to start.

_“Just, talk to him. Start with words. And tell him how you feel before you lose him again you idiot,” Yennefer had counseled teasingly and her words now echoed in Geralt’s ear._

_“Caaaarp,” Y/N reminded him from the other ear, the enunciation of the letter p ringing._

“What do you want to do Jaskier?” Geralt finally asked, leaning against one of the great stone gargoyles that were their only companions on the rooftop. 

Jaskier paced. “I don’t know!” he cried desperately, running graceful fingers through rain-soaked hair anxiously. “I…just…” he bit his lip as it wobbled and turned to Geralt, wide-eyed. “I’m afraid. Every morning I wake up and I think about just staying in bed as if that will keep me safe, but nothing can from him…”

“I will.” Geralt tried to tell himself that the water on the bard’s face was just from the weather but he knew it wasn’t. Just as the mist pooling over his eyes wasn’t.

“What?” The word was whispered, disbelieving as Jaskier stilled, ceasing his pacing to simply stare in disbelief at Geralt.

“Leave with me tonight. If we’re away from this place…”

“He’ll hurt the people I care about. I can’t just run away with you and escape my problems like I used to. Not if it means Yennefer or Y/N coming to harm. Even the Countess and Andre and Firman don’t deserve that kind of threat hanging over them.”

“I’ll hunt him down. If this creature is haunting the music hall, it won’t be hard to find. When it’s dead…”

Jaskier shook his head again, violently, causing Geralt to trail off and frown at him in confusion.

“I…I don’t want him dead. I told you, monster or not, I owe him, and even more if it’s Valdo Marx. He was a friend…more than a friend. I can’t let you just go slay it like any old drowner or wraith.”

Geralt sighed, both moved and frustrated by Jaskier’s concern for the others. 

“Then I’ll stay here with you,” Geralt pushed away from the statue to step toward the bard. “Protect you until it’s…he’s caught or dealt with.”

“What?!”

“Jaskier…” Geralt looked away from those fathomless blue eyes for a long moment before turning his gaze back to the other man. “I want you to be safe, and I will do whatever it takes to make that so.”

“But why?” Jaskier spluttered.

“Because of all people, you shouldn’t be the one trapped in an endless horrible night. You should have nothing but warm sun and…sand and sparkling waves, picturesque sunrises to inspire your songs.”

Jaskier looked like he was struggling with something. “I don’t want to burden you again, Geralt.” The tang of bitterness was sharp in the air and in his voice. Geralt knew that he was thinking of that horrible moment on the mountaintop. “This is my problem, not yours.”

“Those words were a mistake, Jaskier. The worst of the many I’ve made in my life. And this is different anyway.”

“Oh is it? I’m asking you for another favor, help because I can’t manage on my own,” Jaskier’s voice broke slightly and he tried to cover it with a laugh. “It seems exactly the same from where I’m sitting Geralt.”

“I am offering my services, my aid. I _want_ to help you through this, to see you free and happy. As you used to be. As you should be. If you’ll let me.”

“You know, you still haven’t actually given me a reason why.”

Golden eyes burned into blue, the setting sun into the ocean, and they both felt for a moment like they were falling, weightless, breathless, timeless.

“Do you really want me to say it?” Geralt’s voice was quiet, hesitant to break the spell over them.

“Please?” Jaskier shrugged as if he didn’t care, but the ache in his voice was clear and it cut through Geralt more than the sharpest blade possibly could. 

“I love you.”

“Y…you…you do?” there was a tremor in Jaskier’s voice, soft and uncertain and pleading. 

“It should never have taken me as long as it did to realize.” Geralt stepped even closer, a hand gently brushing against one of Jaskier’s in askance. “You have been the one constant good thing in my life. And I’d like to…” he frowned, searching for the right words to say to express the emotions raging through him. “I’d like to make up for the time lost because I was stubborn and stupid. I’d like to take you away from all this, to make you smile again. I want to dry your tears and fight off everything that is making you fear. I want…you to feel safe and free, and sure. And…loved.”

“Oh Geralt,” Jaskier surged forward to clasp both of Geralt’s hands in his, trembling slightly and teary-eyed. “Do you have any idea how long I have waited for you to say so? I love you too. I have for years, and was planning to, even unrequited, until I died.”

Geralt shifted uncomfortably under the intensity of it all, listening to the racing of the bard’s heart and feeling a strange sort of fluttering in his own. He wanted nothing more than to pull Jaskier into his arms and hold him close and safe for the rest of his days.

“Well what’s stopping you then, you great lug?” 

Geralt gave Jaskier a strange look before realizing that he had spoken his desire aloud. Tentatively, he slid his hand up to Jaskier’s elbow, drawing him in halting steps toward an embrace. Until finally, the smaller man decided he was too impatient with his witcher’s hesitation and leapt forward, throwing himself into his arms. 

“Will you say it again, Geralt?” he said softly, gazing up into the suddenly softened face of his love as strong arms tightened around his waist. Yellow eyes stared back at him with an intensity of passion that he felt no longer able to breathe, but at the same time, like he didn’t need to, so long as he had Geralt there.

The witcher chuckled, expression open and light. “I love you Jaskier. And I _will_ keep you safe. Whatever it takes.”

“Good. I love you too.” Jaskier leaned up to press a kiss to the corner of Geralt’s mouth, which the other man returned, turning his face to capture his lips properly, holding tight in an attempt to pour everything that had so long gone unsaid into the connection.

Drawing away, chest heaving slightly as he struggled for breath, Jaskier chuckled. “We should uh…we should probably be getting back. Phantom be damned, I have a show to do.”

Geralt let Jaskier tug him back down the path they had tread not that long ago, a new, surer set to his shoulders and his mind already running through a plan for defeating ‘Valdo Marx’, regardless of whether he was man or creature. 

~

Valdo clenched his hand into a fist as whatever part of his heart was left shriveled and died from Jaskier’s words. He would make his bard come back to him, no matter what it took.

But first, he had to make the witcher regret the day he ever dared to come here, to try and take _his_ Jaskier away. But how?

He suddenly remembered a violet-eyed associate and a song written about her damning love. And he remembered the whispers of the black-sun princess and the beast that butchered her. And he smiled, slow and sinister. There was the answer, laid out like a feast. 

Darting through the shadows, he left the ledge he had been hiding on and made his way back to his lair. There was work yet to be done, and if the witcher would declare war, then so be it.


	8. Masquerade/Why So Silent

The right whispers in the right ears, the right stories told, and the problem would soon go away.

~

Over the weeks that followed, Valdo withdrew to the shadows to wait for his trap to spring. As he watched his flower grow closer to the loathsome witcher, he seethed. But he took comfort in the fact that it would all soon come crashing down, and then Jaskier would have no one to turn to but him. He would be the one to win in the long run.  
~

“It’s obviously the witcher who did it,” the Countess snapped. “Everything only started happening when he showed up, and he’s not called the Butcher of Blaviken for nothing.”

She scoffed at the stunned and rapt audience she had gathered as she ranted.

“Strangulation. Real subtle. I appreciate the poetic nod though. ‘Gorgeous garrotter’ indeed.”

“What?” Jaskier frowned, glaring at her.

“Isn’t that what you called him in your little diddy about his lust affair with the Vengerberg bitch? I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s helping him get away with it. Never trust a mage after all.”

“No.”

“What’s that minstrel? Don’t want to believe your precious wolf is just another rabid cur?”

It took all of Jaskier’s willpower, and Y/N’s white-knuckled grip on his arm, to keep from launching at the woman as she spewed her filth.

“We’ll prove it,” Y/N said, voice far firmer than she felt. “Jaskier will bring Geralt to the Masque as his guest and while he’s out of his rooms, the guard can search it. When there’s no evidence to connect him, you’ll drop your ridiculous theory.”

“Fine.”

As the Countess stormed off Y/N leaned in to hiss in Jaskier’s ear. “You are sure he didn’t do it, right?”

“Geralt would never.”

“Good. Now let’s go. We have a party to prepare for.”

~  
“There’s a masquerade tonight,” Jaskier said, nervously twisting his fingers as he paced. “I’m expected to attend, as the hall’s rising star, but…I don’t want to go alone.”  
Geralt stared at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Now I know what you’re thinking Geralt, that you hardly have a costume for it, but it would not be difficult to go and find you one, or have Yennefer magic something up…or you could go in your armor and we would just need something to cover your face. That is the beauty of it being a costumed party, no one will know who you are and you can do whatever you like.”

“Actually I was thinking that we’ve never attended a formal event together that hasn’t ended in disaster.”

“But we’ve also never attended one _together_.” 

Geralt hummed, hands reaching out to pull Jaskier closer until the bard stumbled onto his lap, an arm thrown around his neck as Geralt’s ensnared his waist.

Jaskier giggled, burying his face in soft silver hair. “Please Geralt? This is the first grand event the hall has put on since…well it’s been weeks since anyone’s heard a peep from Valdo and I think it might be…”

“A trap. That makes sense.”

“I was going to say fun. Maybe even a new beginning. A beginning I’d like you to embark on with me.”

Geralt sighed. “This is one of those things I’m not getting out of, isn’t it?”

“Well…”

“Fine. Unless you have some idea, and clothes that would fit me, I should go see Yennefer then I suppose.”

“Oh Geralt thank you! This will be great fun, you’ll see.” Jaskier kissed his cheek as he stood excitedly.

“Also, the Countess may have been spreading rumors that you were the murderer, and Y/N tried to defend you by offering to let the guard search your room while you were at the party with me,” he muttered quickly as Geralt was leaving.

Geralt whipped around to stare at him incredulously. “What?”

“Everything will be fine. I was going to ask you to come anyway. Trust me?”

The glare he was given could have cut glass. Jaskier smiled what he hoped was his most convincing grin. Geralt sighed.

“You had better know what you’re doing.”

“Thank you Geralt,” Jaskier clasped his hands over his heart. “Now I will meet you at the music hall, under the third lamppost from the left, at exactly eight.”

Geralt nodded and, with another sigh, went to see a witch about his wardrobe.

~

It wasn’t hard to find the witcher’s room or get inside. The harp string stolen from the orchestra’s stock was wrapped around a fist and pulled tight between his hands. If his rival died today, all the easier. He would see Jaskier through his grief, as he had before. 

But the room was empty when he slipped through the window. He rummaged about the clothing and armor, fondling the swords for a moment, but they would be too noticeable to take. Besides, the irritating stagehand had been strangled. Any proper artist would tell you that consistency was key to a good story.

Content in his inspection of the room, Valdo carefully coiled the thin wire around his fingers, twisting the end in on itself to keep it in place. Then he laid it gently in among the strange potions the witcher kept around, knowing they would be personal enough only he would have access.

He settled the stylized ram’s head over his face and slipped back out. Invite or no, there was a party to attend.

~

Jaskier smiled as he saw Yennefer and Y/N walk in, hand in hand. It was not often that the wives were able to be together, the couple kept apart by the day-to-day realities of their respective positions within the company, so it brought his heart joy to see them taking the opportunity they had. It was almost enough, in fact, to distract himself from the apprehension in his heart at the prospect of stepping out, quite publicly, with Geralt for the first time. Geralt, who rumors were beginning to spread about, who more than one had suggested might be the murderer, the Phantom. His stomach roiled with nerves.

And then Geralt appeared at his side and the twisting became for an entirely different reason. He had always admired Geralt’s looks, but this…this was something special. His broad shoulders perfectly filled out the black doublet with silver embroidery, the sheen and style making it ripple and sway like a shadow mirage. Rich plum purple lace peaked out over the collar, the barest hint of a colored undershirt hiding beneath. His stunning locks were braided back from his face in a pair of thin, complex braids which flowed into the gentle waves down the back of his neck. His filigreed mask, silver with black detailing in counter to his doublet, finished out the look, a breathtaking enigma. Jaskier compared it to his own costume of reds and golds, more sultry and playful than this stylized elegance. Day and night, sun and moon. Oh Yennefer was _good._

Jaskier mingled, and Geralt hovered, occasionally pulled onto the dance floor for a song or two, both of them getting handsier and more creative in their dance steps as the evening wore on and the drinks continued to flow. At one point, the witcher found himself nuzzling into the bard’s neck, no longer caring so much about discretion or carefulness nearly as much as he did about having Jaskier so close and looking so beautiful. 

Shortly after, a familiar scent of lilac and gooseberries floated over the couple as another couple approached to cut in, the two women claiming their partners for a chat as they looped about the floor.

“You look happy Geralt,” Yennefer purred, blood red lips curled in a smirk. 

“I am,” he admitted, looking at her earnestly from behind his mask. “You do too, you know. Marital bliss is a good look on you.”

“I owe you that. I would never have become the woman that deserved Y/N, or been lucky enough to meet her, without you.” She smiled, glancing over his shoulder to watch Y/N and Jaskier as the ever-graceful pair claimed the center of attention. “I’m happy for you.”

“Really?” his lip curled up in a teasing smile. “The way you’re keeping me from him right now, I thought you might be jealous.”

“My beloved wife wanted a moment with her friend.” She quirked an eyebrow. “And you looked about ready to strip him down and devour him right here. I do have an interest in maintaining a degree of…decorum around here.”

Geralt stammered, flustered and unable to find a reply before Jaskier was swept back over and gracefully deposited into his arms and Yennefer stolen away, a partner trade made into a dance move. Y/N smiled smugly and murmured something in Yennefer’s ear, too low for even his witcher senses to pick up, and Yennefer laughed again. 

Suddenly someone screamed, and from seemingly nowhere, a figure appeared. Great curling black horns rose back from a skeletal face; shadows cast and lights danced on the beading of the caped black costume, creating the illusion that flames licked up around him. Standing where he was at the top of the stairs, he towered over the crowd which fell hushed and still with fear.

“Terribly sorry that I’m late,” the figure drawled, arms thrown wide, a performer before a captive audience. “My invitation appears to have been lost.” 

He chuckled, the sound vibrating through the listeners. “Do not fear. I have…missed you all.”

Yennefer moved to stand in front of Y/N, arm curled protectively to keep her back as the figure leaned over the banister to cast his eye over the crowd.

“I have written a performance.” He held something up in his gloved hand before casting it down to the ground below where it, a folio made of pale leather (a few close by noted that it looked sickeningly close to the color of flesh) spilled open at the managers’ feet.

“For it to be quite right, there are of course a few specifics to take care of.” From his sleeve he drew a long, thin knife and he began to make his way down the stairs, speaking as he went.

Geralt squeezed a hand on Jaskier’s hip reassuringly before slipping away into the crowd and shadow, hoping to reach his swords, checked at the door, in time. 

“The Countess, first. She has her use but must be reined in, not allowed to undeservedly dominate the stage.” Valdo gestured at the woman in question with the tip of the dagger in a motion that less than subtly suggested the slitting of her throat. Her mouth opened and closed wordlessly before he waved dismissively and turned to the next on his list.

“Her counterpart, Piangi,” he thrust forward, not quite making contact with the large man, who made a weak attempt to stand his ground defensively. “A romantic lead needs gravitas, not buffoonery.” 

“And my managers. You have been given several chances to do what’s right and stay out of my way. Do as you're told, count your coins, and let those with proper knowledge run the show.” This time the dagger was swift and came close enough to graze the tip from Firman’s mustache and the two men cowered.

“And our star. Sweet songbird. Jaskier.” Valdo stepped down slowly toward where Jaskier stood, frozen as he always felt when he appeared. The dagger remained pointed at the ground, and his free hand came up as if to caress Jaskier’s face. “His talent is good, but he knows what he must do if he truly wants to succeed. Come back to me, his beloved tutor.”

Valdo’s eyes fell to the medallion which Geralt had given to him, normally worn tucked under his shirt for protection but now slipped through the loose laces of his collar to sit openly, almost a challenge. He snatched at it, breaking chain and jerking Jaskier forward.

“You belong to _me._ ” Valdo hissed, face close enough that Jaskier could feel the air that passed between clenched teeth and count the flecks of gold in those haunting green eyes. 

Then, as suddenly as he appeared, Valdo had dashed back up the central stairs and was gone in a puff of smoke.

Geralt and Yennefer both ran to inspect where he had gone, reaching it just in time to catch the edge of a trapdoor settling into place, invisible in the pattern of the floor. 

He looked up at her, eyes full of confusion and rage. She returned his glance with sorrow. Partygoers began to scatter, and Geralt went to Jaskier’s side as the bard bent to pick up the now damaged token.

“Why is this happening Geralt?” Jaskier’s voice was so small and an icy hand of fear, and of shame that he hadn’t been there to when Jaskier needed him (again), clenched over the witcher’s heart. 

Before he could answer, a number of the city guard burst through the entrance, shouting for everyone to remain calm and stay where they were. They approached Geralt.

“Witcher,” the captain of them said. “You are under arrest for the murder of Master Joseph Boquet. Please come with us peacefully or we will resort to deadly force.”

Geralt frowned in puzzlement but knelt to place his sword on the ground and stood quietly, hands raised in a show of peace.

“On what evidence?” Y/N snapped, stepping forward before Yennefer could catch her.

“This wire, covered in old blood, found among the witcher’s personal belongings. He is a known killer, so the presence of what is obviously the murder weapon raises no question.”

Geralt frowned. He had never seen such a wire before in his life, but he knew better than to try and argue once someone had decided he was responsible. And so he surrendered to the guard and was marched out, to the jeers and murmurs of the remaining crowd, head hung low and heart sunk even further. Yennefer stood silently beside Jaskier who watched him go and waited until he could no longer catch even the slightest glimpse of silver before he let himself collapse, sobbing, into the mage’s arms.

“We’ll fix this,” Y/N said, “Right?” She glanced at her wife, but she remained silent, unwilling to make false promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the culmination of something I hit on back in “Music of the Night” because word association is fun.  
> Garish>Geralt>Garrotter


	9. Madame Giry's Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternate Title: Yennefer explains.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a hard chapter for me, and a turning point in the story, because I had to decide if we were dealing with a man or a monster.

Yennefer stared the guard down with a look somewhere between wry and the kind of bored where people start disappearing without a trace. He appeared to be reading the papers she brought with her for the fourth time. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” she snapped. “Are you going to let me see the prisoner or not?”

“You know, we don’t allow…conjugal visits until the person has been condemned.” 

“You know,” she mocked his tone near perfectly. “I could make your death incredibly painful.”

The guard swallowed nervously and rushed to stand and lead her back into the heart of the prison. Geralt sat, head bowed over his knees, on the rough straw pallet in the darkest, dankest cell in the building. He was still in his party clothes, though the doublet was unbuttoned, his hair unbraided, and in general he looked worse for wear. In fact, as she inspected the witcher, Yennefer guessed that he had been subjected to torture, or at least a harsh beating, more than once in the days since his arrest.

“There is to be a trial,” she told him without preamble. “Jaskier’s spent a year’s worth of earnings to find you a defense.”

Geralt looked up, startled by her voice as it echoed against the stone, briefly considering that she was just an illusion. Only the nonsense she spoke told him she might, _might_ be real.

“Whose earnings?” he asked, voice cracking with disuse. “I know well enough that he doesn’t save money.”

“He took an advance. He indebted himself to the music hall for you. So you had better not screw it up.”

Shame made Geralt drop his head once more, staring at the hands he saw stained with blood even if no one else did, before turning back to the sorceress.

“Tell me what’s going on here Yennefer.”

“There haven’t been any new sightings or events since the masquerade…everyone is rehearsing the Phantom’s show because they’re too frightened not to. Most people don’t believe that you’re him, but there’s still enough people pushing the narrative that they won’t just release you.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it. The creature, spirit, whatever. Tell me about it.”

“What makes you think…” she was cut off by Geralt’s snarl.

“Your wife implied that you know more than you’re letting on Yennefer. And when she wasn’t busy vaguely threatening me with piscine nicknames, she also told me how much you’ve come to care about Jaskier. I can’t protect him, or Y/N, or anyone else, if I don’t have answers. Please Yen?”

She sighed. “Very well. I hate it when you’re right.” She rubbed one hand against her temple in frustration. “I don’t know Valdo Marx, though I spent enough time in courts to be familiar with him by reputation. And of course, from listening to Jaskier’s stories.”

Geralt raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“He used to perform at the music hall; he was their lead for years. Until a few years ago when the city was sacked…”

“Nilfgaard,” Geralt growled, unsurprised that the empire was the root of yet another problem in his life.

“By _Cintra._ ” Yennefer corrected pointedly. “And the music hall was all but destroyed. Valdo Marx was listed dead after everything was over, but they never actually found his body.”

“So you think that the _thing_ beneath the music hall could actually be Valdo Marx?”

“Well no. Not just him…”

Geralt sighed in frustration. Even after all this time, with everything at stake, she was still holding out on him.

“I think, and I could be wrong, I haven’t been able to find proof, that Valdo Marx merged with something much eviler, or was taken over by it. I might even know the creature that is…inhabiting him.” She turned away from Geralt’s piercing gaze, wrapping one arm across her chest to grip the folded elbow of the other. “I brought it here when I was younger and…stupider.”

Geralt sighed, knowing that she was referring to the years of her desperate, reckless quest to undo her sterilization by Aretuza.

“I came here chasing a rumor, and because it wasn’t a city considered important enough for the Brotherhood to bother with. There was supposedly a creature here, a spirit older than the city, maybe even older than humanity. It was said to be made of pure chaos, to be dark and powerful, to hold sway over the fabric of reality, to play with life and death like one might light matches just to let them burn out. I thought…if I could bind the creature to a single place for a while, I could bargain with it.”

“Yennefer…” the tone of Geralt’s voice bored a little too close to pity for her taste and she shot him a glare.

“It worked. I was able to bind the spirit, to a point in the catacombs that is now long buried under the basement of the music hall. When I left, I didn’t bother to consider the spirit; I had no more use for it, and didn’t care what happened. That is part of why I took the position here, to make up for that. But when I went down, it was gone, and it left behind no violent sign of escape. I thought it must have been freed. So I waited. And now all of this happening, I can’t buy as a coincidence.”

She began to pace, the swishing of her skirt highlighting her agitation. 

“I didn’t bind the spirit alone though. I had help. It would have been too powerful otherwise, overwhelmed me. And after the djinn…well I did learn. There were three other mages who helped me do it, but I don’t think we can turn to any of them to help _un_ do it. Sabrina is dealing with something of her own; Istredd’s lost behind Nilfgaardian lines. And Triss …is soft. I think she would view the creature as a something to save instead of destroy. We have to do this ourselves.”

She stopped, facing Geralt head on and meeting his gilded eyes in all their anger.

“I don’t know how or why it merged with Valdo Marx. He may have been trying to escape or survive the attack and accidentally released or he may have done it intentionally. But it is some shadow of his memories that is why the creature has fixated as it has. Having human vessel is making it more dangerous and unpredictable than it would have been alone.”

“If something happens to Jaskier…” the threat did not need to be finished, his tone said enough.

She laughed, harsh and mirthless. “I am less afraid of your wrath than I am of my own self-hatred, should _anyone else_ come to harm from this.” She met his sharp gaze with one of her own, burning equal parts rage and fear. “I’ve no love or loyalty left to the spirit Geralt. And if you seek to destroy it, I’ll help you. But if at any point it comes to a choice between you or her, I will not lose Y/N.”

“I understand Yennefer. I would never ask…” his shoulders slumped, knowing that he was probably lying even as he spoke.

She reached through the bars to give his hand a gentle squeeze before turning sharply on her heel and returning to the prison office.

“You have a single piece of easily planted evidence,” she accused the guard captain before she was even through the door completely. “The rest of your case is based on conjecture and prejudice.” 

“Excuse me?” the guard captain snapped, standing from his desk and blustering, fat walrus-like mustache wobbling. “How dare you barge in here?!”

She looked him up and down and narrowed her eyes. “Do you really want it getting around that you arrested and held a man for murder based on a single word from the lyrics of a ballad?”

“The trial hasn’t taken place yet. What would you have me do, Mistress…?” he waved his hand as if waiting for her name.

“Yennefer of Vengerberg.” She smiled somewhat smugly as he paled. “Release the witcher…into my watchful custody. I’ll ensure he shows up for the trial, and we can put him to use in the meantime.”


	10. Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again

As soon as he was released from the prison, ostensibly into Yennefer’s custody, Geralt’s first instinct was to go and check on Jaskier. 

“He’ll be asleep,” Yennefer cautioned. “Let him rest, and get some rest yourself. See him in the morning.”

Geralt shook his head. “I need to see him now. I…don’t intend to leave his side until this is solved.”

She studied him for a moment and then sighed. “I can let you into the dormitory hall, but the rooms are shared by a half-dozen performers each. Who will raise an alarm and wreak havoc if you disturb them unexpectedly. There is a small alcove not far from the door to his room, if you really insist on it, you can rest there.”

He took her hand in his and squeezed it affectionately. “Thank you Yennefer. For everything you’ve done and are doing.”

She rolled her eyes. “You fall for the bard and suddenly you’ve gone all soft on me.”

~

Geralt dozed fitfully, propped in the little space Yennefer had directed him toward. Jaskier knew that the witcher was waiting there for him, and that if he asked it, he would go with him happily. But unfortunately, that was the problem. He loved Geralt and knew that the other man was only trying to look out for him, but since everything began, he had felt suffocated, strangled by the concern on the faces of those closest and contempt on everyone else’s. He needed space. He needed a moment alone. He needed to think.  
He pulled his cloak tightly around him as he slipped past his sleeping guardian in the pre-dawn light, trusting his familiarity with the music hall to guide him where light could not.

~

He had only meant to take a short walk, let the crisp morning air clear his mind, but some impulse or instinct carried him out past the city walls to the cemetery with its hundreds of quiet, unremarkable dead. 

“I wonder,” he breathed, words misting in the air before him as he leaned against a low stone wall separating the graves into years, “are any of you the ghost that haunts me now?”

He stood there for a long while, thoughts tumbling over each other. Was this spirit indeed, as he had once hoped, the one his grandfather spoke of? Why then had it turned cruel? And why was wearing a mangled version of the face of his first love? (Well, calling Valdo his _first_ or _love_ were perhaps being overdramatic, but there had been something unique and special about their relationship when they had been young and foolish boys at school, something neither of them had ever cared to categorize.) And if it wasn’t the spirit, what was it? What did it want from him?

He felt tears stinging at his eyes as he began to wander again, the wind biting at him through the layers he’d put on. As a younger man he might have loved this whole ordeal, the drama and the twisted desire, the waring feelings within him for the monster and the hunter, every element a piece of the perfect story, a ballad of epic proportions, one for the ages and the history books. But now, he just wanted peace. 

A monument caught his eye and called to him, a hooded figure playing the violin, carved so lifelike that he could almost hear the aching notes.

_Valdo Marx  
A True Artist Never Dies  
May His Song Be Everlasting In Our Hearts_

Jaskier drew in a sharp breath as numb, gloved fingers reached out to trace the letters of the inscription on the plinth. 

He had wondered, when he came to the city where he knew Valdo had been a frequent performer, why they had never run into each other, but thought that perhaps it was just a matter of timing or of Valdo having found somewhere better to be, after all they were quite far from Cidaris, whence he drew his fame. As it had gone on, it had become no more than a passing curiosity. It was better that they never met, what with being rivals. But still, he had never imagined nor wished the man dead (the incident with the djinn far from his mind at that moment). 

“I don’t understand,” he muttered, as if the hardened stone could give him answers. “How can he be dead? Unless…”

He took a step back and planted his hands on his hips in an attempt to look imperious, drawing on what memories he had of learning to be a proper noble from his father. 

“I don’t know if this is how any of this works, but I hope that you can hear me. If you’re really dead and haunting me then say so. Tell me plainly.”

Silence reigned over the cemetery, so complete that Jaskier thought he could hear the snowflakes that now fell from the sky as they settled on the stones and ground around him. 

“No I suppose I didn’t expect that would work,” he said after a while, shrugging. “Well, it was worth a try.”

Still, he could not peel himself away from the beautifully carved marker. He sat heavily, regardless of the cold and wet and cast his eyes upward, as if hoping to find some face beneath the player’s hood. Instead he found only shadow.

“That doesn’t seem right for you, you know,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the statue. “You were never the mysterious hooded-figure type, and of all the instruments you played the violin was your worst. Course, trumpeting angels wouldn’t be right either. Too nice, too clean for you.”

He ran a hand through his hair, briefly wondering if criticizing a dead man’s grave to the air when his ghost might or might not be haunting him was a good idea, but decided that it probably didn’t matter. What could it do, make Valdo haunt him more?

“Can’t fault them completely I guess. They were trying their best. You were…impossible to capture in a single thing. There was just too much of you, and too contradictory, for that.”

He fell silent, leaning back and closing his eyes, as he had against the man himself when the two worked on lyrics together (when they weren’t competing fiercely), in the rare moments of peace between them, under the trees at Oxenfurt.

“How did you die I wonder? Did you have to suffer? Were you alone? Gods I hope you weren’t alone. You hated silences and being left completely to your own thoughts. It wouldn’t have been fair.”

He was crying now, the tears freezing to his face painfully while he continued to ramble.

“I do miss you sometimes. More so since I settled than when I was travelling, but I think that’s because I could convince myself we’d only just narrowly passed each other and might cross paths again.”

He sighed.

“I didn’t want to reunite or rekindle the…passion between us. But you were my first friend you know, the first person who saw me as Jaskier, or as a musician. I loved that you considered me an artistic rival and the way we fought. It was the first time I didn’t think someone only saw the Viscount de Lettenhove.”

Suddenly, he stiffened. The wind carried the sound of his name, whispered, coaxing, to his ears. He stood, dusting off the seat of his pants, and waited. When he heard it again, he tried to follow, wending further from the gates, toward the decrepit and tumbling mausoleums that stood, long forgotten, near the walls. 

One of the sets of great, iron doors stood open. An eerie, reddish light glowed from within as Jaskier climbed, entranced.

“Who are you that calls to me?” he asked, voice whispering and awed.

“Have you forgotten your Angel of Music?” the answer was soft, almost hurt. “You know who I am. Come to me, my sweet.”

Jaskier nodded, his steps drawing him nearer. “I tried to deny you. I turned from you. I still feel like I should be fighting against this pull…”

The response was hypnotic, sonorous, perfectly cadenced to fit into Jaskier’s mind. “But you know, in your soul, you can feel it, we are two halves. You cannot resist, do not want to resist. Come to me, come to the Angel of Music.”

He was nearly at the doors when another voice cut through his mind, breaking the hold over him that the spirit seemed to possess.

“Jaskier!” Geralt called, thundering up on Roach. “Stop!” He dismounted before the horse had fully ceased her movements, drawing his silver sword as he ran to the bard’s side.

“Geralt!” the cry was startled, but pleased, a thundering terror suddenly sweeping over Jaskier and threatening to drive him to his knees.

“Whatever you think, whatever’s going on, this _thing_ means to harm you.”

With a snarl, Valdo leapt at the witcher, diving out from behind one of the mausoleum’s statuary in a flurry of black cloak and the flash of steel as his own sword struck out.  
Geralt dodged, barely, and the pair locked into combat. The clash of blades shattered the stillness of the morning, their ever-moving feet stirring up the mud and slush, sliding to keep their balance. Jaskier cowered, pressed to the banister of the stair, struck numb with fear and the confusion of it being for both men. 

More than once the Phantom tried to blind or distract Geralt with a swirl of his cape, and at least twice his aggressive movements had seen the witcher tumble to the ground. Still, strength for strength and blow for blow it was an even match, and as they moved, Jaskier followed, wide-eyed and open mouthed in horror.

The Phantom punched Geralt, who stumbled back with the sickening crunch of his nose breaking. When he recovered footing and sight, the ghost was gone, only to reappear moments later from around a statue, striking at him from the back. Geralt barely dodged, feeling the blade slice into his shoulder, and shouted. 

Rather than slowing him though, this seemed merely to light a greater fire within the witcher and he lunged, startling the Phantom, who stumbled down a short set of steps. Using the height, plus his own natural size, Geralt pressed the advantage against the lither opponent. Knocking his sword away, he swung back, ready to behead the other man and see the whole thing end.

“Geralt, no!” Jaskier called out, rushing to his side. “Please, not…not in a cemetery, not like this.”

Geralt stepped back, panting heavily, and turned to the bard in confusion. Jaskier’s eyes were wide and pleading, the blue shining with tears and fear and pain. He gritted his teeth, turning back to the creature on the ground, fury pounding in his blood. And then he sheathed his sword.

He swung himself onto Roach’s back and reached down to pull Jaskier gently up behind him. 

“Let’s go,” he growled, taking off at a hard canter. 

Jaskier wrapped his arms tightly around Geralt’s waist, casting a last glance back at the Phantom, who was now standing and watching them go, the tension in him obvious even from the growing distance, before pressing his face between Geralt’s shoulder blades with a soft sob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, let it be war upon you both.


	11. We Have All Been Blind/Twisted Every Way

The day of the performance was quickly approaching, and they were no closer to bringing down the Phantom than they had been at the start. And worse than that, looming over their heads was the fact that if they could not bring him down, Geralt would stand trial for the other man’s crimes.

Y/N insisted on being a part of planning, arguing that, after all, Jaskier was her best friend and the music hall was her home. The trio sat around in Yennefer’s office late into one night, a pensive silence making the air heavy, nearly suffocating.

“Alright, someone must have an idea?” Y/N snapped, drawing two pairs of unnatural colored eyes to her face. She flushed at the attention but held her ground. “Well?”  
“I do,” Geralt muttered after a long while.

“Were you going to share it?” Yennefer raised an eyebrow at him as she asked.

“The answer is clearly staring us in the face,” he shrugged. “If his show is performed, he’ll be there. And if Jaskier is front and center, he’ll be focused on that, if he continues his same pattern. Summon the guard, be ready, strike while he’s unaware.”

“But what about proof?” Y/N bit her lip. “Unless you’re suggesting we let someone else get hurt so he can be caught in the act?”

“If we catch him, we can force a confession, or get him to show us where he hides out, find the evidence we need there?” Yennefer suggested.

Geralt nodded. “And if he’s more creature than man, proof won’t matter. I’ll be there to put an end to him.” His face twisted in a mix of guilt and hate, from the knowledge that he would have to break his promise to Jaskier in order to keep him safe, and the sick hope that he was right that it would come to that.

“Great,” Y/N clapped her hands together. “So who’s going to convince the managers and the guard? And who’s going to tell Jaskier that he’s bait?”

Geralt swallowed down the thought of a second betrayal. “I’ll talk to Jaskier if you two can handle arranging the rest. The guards aren’t exactly my biggest fans.”

Yennefer nodded, but her eyes chilled as she stared back at him, her suspicion burning at him.

~

The afternoon of the performance, backstage buzzed with even more nerves than usual, and even several hours before the show, the audience had begun to trickle into the lounges and lobby, promising a packed show for the night.

“Why are there so many of the guard here? And why are some of them dressed as actors?” Jaskier asked Y/N as they made their way to the dormitory dining room for supper.

“What do you mean?” She asked, a frown creasing her face. “Did Geralt not…” she cut her question off with a swear as Jaskier’s puzzled expression mirrored her own. “He lied to us so you wouldn’t know the plan didn’t he?!”

“What plan? Y/N what are you talking about?”

“Oh I’m going to kill him. I’m going to wring his stupid neck, make his stupid face turn blue. Or whatever color strangled witchers turn,” she muttered through clenched teeth, nearly turning on her heel to hunt him down and do exactly that when Jaskier stopped her with a hand on her elbow.

“Tell me what’s going on first?” he tilted his head to the side pleadingly and she sighed. 

She led Jaskier over to a table in the corner, far from the other ensemble members, dropping her voice low and leaning in close.

“I don’t know why he didn’t tell you, he said he would. But Geralt had a plan. To catch the Phantom. Tonight.”

~

Jaskier threw clothes haphazardly into a bag, emptying out the trunk at the foot of his narrow bed. He didn’t even look at what he was packing, or care, desperate to get something together and get out of there as soon as possible. It was all too much, and he could feel his breath coming in short, terrified pants, blood roaring in his ears so loud he didn’t hear Geralt’s approach. 

“Jaskier,” Geralt said, voice low and cautious. 

Jaskier jumped, nearly screaming, startled. 

“What are you doing?”

“Packing. Leaving,” Jaskier said sharply. “I thought that was obvious.”

“Why? I thought you weren’t willing to run away and put anyone else in danger from this ‘Phantom?’”

“I wasn’t. But evidently, the rest of you don’t have the same concern for me. I can’t do this Geralt. So I’m going. I’m not strong or brave like you and Yennefer and Y/N. I’m a coward, and strangely okay with it at the moment. It’s not like you care.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I care.”

“Y/N told me that you had some plan. One you said you were going to tell me and then didn’t. That doesn’t exactly inspire trust or feel like caring. Why didn’t you tell me what was going on Geralt?”

“I didn’t want…I thought…” Geralt found that he couldn’t explain, he was too afraid of what would come of his honesty.

“What? That I would make better bait if I didn’t know I was?” Jaskier snapped, blue eyes sparking with rage but also with pain. 

“That’s not it at all Jaskier! This _thing_ is an unknown, and keeps managing to be two steps ahead of us. The fewer people know the plan, the harder it is for him to get word of it.”

“Oh, so you thought I’d betray you?” 

“I didn’t say that!” Geralt’s own eyes hardened. “Why are you twisting my words?”

“Because I’m frightened!” Tears began to slip down Jaskier’s cheeks and Geralt froze, heartbroken and unsure of how to fix this. “I told you, he scares me. And if I do this, if he takes me he will never let me go. I’m sure of it. We’ll be parted and I’ll be trapped beneath the city with him forever.”

“I’m still not sure he’s anything but a twisted man,” Geralt said, taking Jaskier by the hand in an attempt at comfort. “But if he is more than that, it’s all the more reason to catch him now, to free you from his grasp.”

“Please don’t make me do this, Geralt.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt sighed, “this is our only chance.”

“You’re asking me to gamble with my life, Geralt! It’s not fair.” He pulled himself free of Geralt’s grip and slammed his hands down on the mattress in front of him, tangling them into the sheet to hide their trembling.

“I know.”

“And to betray someone who’s given me so much. Who I _owe my life_ to. It’s cruel.”

“I know.”

“There’s no going back from this, whichever way it turns out.”

“I know.”

“I don’t have much of a choice do I? Either I go along and risk everything, or I let him win anyway and control the rest of my life, and hurt people I care about.”

Geralt nodded, lips pressed into a thin line, almost an expression of apology, or guilt.

“I trust you Geralt, but I really don’t want to do this.”

“I know Jaskier,” Geralt stepped forward to cup Jaskier’s cheek in one of his hands, staring into his wide, watery, blue eyes. “I wouldn’t ask you to if there was any way around it. But we’re out of time and out of options.” He pressed their foreheads together. “Believe me, if I thought there was any other way, I would keep you as far from harm as I could. But it all hinges on you.”

“I want to reiterate that I am very, very afraid of what horrors might await me. I do not like your plan. I know I don’t know what your plan is, but I don’t have to to know I don’t like it.” 

Geralt wrapped his arms around Jaskier, holding him close and safe in his arms, even if it was fleeting.

“I won’t ever be far, and I won’t let anything happen. But I can’t say more. He could be anywhere, listening, even now.”

~

Valdo smirked as he slipped away from the peephole where he had watched the scene. The witcher might think that he had the upper hand, but he wouldn’t for long. 

The time was nigh for his great moment: the big reveal, the final curtain, the trap snapping shut. The knowledge was almost enough to overpower his revulsion at the sight of the great brute laying hands on his precious flower. 

The audience would soon arrive. 

He slipped the fine, narrow black mask over his features, to better match the costumes he had directed the managers put his cast in.

Let the games begin.


	12. The Point of No Return

Jaskier waited in the wings for his cue. He couldn’t see Geralt, who had taken up a position on Box Five, through the small silver of curtain he peered from, and for that he was strangely grateful, the bitterness of being kept in the dark, of not being included on something that so intimately involved him, still staining his heart and souring his tongue. The glimpses he caught of the adoring crowd added a rush of excitement to the tension pooling in his belly.

He understood why Geralt had lied to him, and to the others. The White Wolf was far too used to being alone and trusting only himself. But it made Jaskier feel like a burden to the witcher, just another thing in the way. Again. It frightened him how easily the deception had seemed to be to Geralt, and how much it felt like being left behind or sent away, flashing scenes of the last time it happened across the bard’s anxious mind.

And then he spotted his cue and there was no time to think on it further as he stepped onto the boards, his only hesitation in-character.

~

Geralt shifted anxiously, every sense on high alert. Jaskier was just stepping out onto the stage, but there had so far been no sign of “Valdo.” 

His voice was soft, low timbre full of promise and desire. Every fiber of Geralt’s body tensed, practically vibrating with the conflicting emotions running through him, and when Jaskier’s voice broke on a particular note it took all of his willpower not to leap off the balcony to take him into his arms. 

And still there was no sign. Had his instincts been wrong? He wasn’t sure what he would do if that was the case, since this was likely their last real shot. Geralt scanned the room. One of the guards in disguise shifted nervously in his seat. 

The curtains at the back of the stage fluttered. A masked dancer emerged, stalking toward Jaskier silently where he sat, vulnerable and open, not seeing or caring about the threat. Geralt had to remind himself that this was all part of the show and Jaskier was in no real danger. 

The masked man began to sing and Jaskier startled, imperceptible if not for his witcher senses, before relaxing again, turning slowly, a seductive glance over his shoulder that sent a thrill up Geralt’s spine, a second’s distraction as he wished he was the one Jaskier was looking at that way.

~

His voice was warm, honey-toned and deep, a purr striking straight to the core. Each slow, flowing step brought him circling closer, a shark toward a wounded seal. Jaskier felt like a gull caught in a fisher’s net, trapped and tangled, unable to fly away. Yet somehow, the words that the Phantom sung soothed him, the desire to flee diminishing with every line, leaving him breathless and utterly still.

He tried to stick to the script even as his mind went blank and the Phantom’s fathomless green eyes burned into him. They faced each other on the stage, the space between them a gulf or easily crossed in a matter of seconds. As he sang of succumbing to the passion between the characters, he felt it in his soul. He wanted nothing more than to give in, to do whatever he was commanded, now and forever. 

Ever so slowly, they approached one another. The rest of the world melted away until he and Valdo were all that existed. Gloved fingers rose to caress his face. He leaned into the touch, nearly forgetting to sing as he did. 

~

Geralt watched the scene play out with dawning horror. They hadn’t been able to spot the Phantom in the crowd because he had been waiting in the shadows backstage, waiting to come forward. The show had indeed been a trap, but they were the ones caught in it.

Geralt felt like such an idiot. Of course he would star in his own show. And why not, when it gave him power? All eyes were on him, especially Jaskier’s, and no one could reach him. If he chose to, he could kill the blue-eyed bard and several dancers before anyone could intervene. He gave a signal to the guards anyway, and several of them slipped out of position to begin circling. It was time for damage control.

~

Valdo smirked. He watched the witcher and the city guards out of the corner of his eye, even as Jaskier’s mind surrendered to his influence. For his little songbird, the line between reality and the story was blurring and merging.

“I told you that you would always be mine,” he murmured, taking the last step and pulling the blue-eyed man to press back-to-chest against him. He leaned in, lips brushing the shell of Jaskier’s ear and made sure that the words were only for him, and not their equally enraptured audience. “You belong to me.”

~

Valdo’s face glowed in the flickering firelight, shadows and valleys forming jack-o-lantern skeletons, dancing and warping his features with every breath as Jaskier gazed up at him over his shoulder. 

“From now until forever,” he promised breathlessly.

Pearl-white teeth flashed. “I had hoped you’d say that Songbird. But first, you have a show to do.”

A shiver ran down Jaskier’s spine, hot breath tickling his neck. He wanted nothing more than to stay there, caged in Valdo’s strong grip, in uncaring bliss. But even back at Oxenfurt, Valdo had always been a consummate professional and refused to leave anything unfinished.

As he stepped away from the embrace to carry on, a flash of silver caught his attention. Geralt, jaw clenched and back rigid, amber eyes shining with tears. Staring at him, and at Valdo. Of course he would see it, would know how much there was in this that wasn’t acting. 

He felt like his mind was trying to tear itself in two. A part of him wanted to forget the whole thing, to jump off the stage and into Geralt’s arms, to insist that they get Roach immediately and flee, to wherever Geralt thought best as long as it came with the promise to never return here. But the rest of him boiled with rage and hatred. How dare he come here, after so long, after everything he had put Jaskier through, and ruin the good things that he now had. The witcher had never been anything but selfish and vile. 

The world spun and he thought he might faint.

The audience applauded, startling him completely and breaking his concentration on either of the men. Somehow, even as he was tormented by his feelings, he had finished the song and done it well.

He turned to Valdo for the next part, spotting guards creeping up as he did. And suddenly, he reached up, seized the cold black mask, and ripped it from the Phantom’s face before he even knew fully what he was doing. 

Gasps and at least one scream rippled through the room. 

Valdo’s face twisted in a snarl.

The guard leapt forward, swords drawn, at the same time that a hand wrapped around Jaskier’s throat. Once again his back was pulled against Valdo’s torso, a shield now instead of a lover’s embrace.

“That was your last mistake,” Valdo growled coldly, squeezing his airway.

The mask dropped from slack fingers as he silently begged for air. Everyone froze, watching each other for what would come next. 

Valdo drew a blade of his own from some hidden place within his costume and pulled backwards toward the curtains and the rigging. Stopping before one of the thick ropes, he sliced.

Jaskier’s eyes fell to the label just before the blade connected and cast his expression upward, hoping that Geralt would catch the warning in it.

~

Geralt dove out of the way just as the great, crystal chandelier over the center of the stage came swinging, crashing down. 

When the spray of glass and initial burst of flame cleared, Valdo and Jaskier were nowhere to be seen. The audience and cast and crew panicked, fleeing, screaming, drowning out all other sounds and threatening to overwhelm his sensitive hearing. 

Geralt growled, forcing himself to his feet and charging into the warren of halls behind the theater, seeking Yennefer with a desperation that in that moment made up all of his being.


	13. Down Once More/The Final Lair

Geralt stumbled past a crowd of sobbing ballerinas, paying no heed to them mourning one of their own, the man Valdo had apparently murdered in order to replace. The quick flash he saw of the man’s neck, bruised and crushed, summoned the last sight he had of Jaskier back to the forefront of his mind: the Phantom’s hand wrapped around his throat, threatening to crush his windpipe with bare hands; the terror in Jaskier’s eyes, the rage in the Phantom’s. Geralt felt himself go cold.

And then he spotted the sorceress and her wife as they moved through the crowd. Catching up quickly, he seized Yennefer by the shoulders, forcing her to stop and look at him. Shye jerked to a halt beside them, the wives unwilling to release their vice-like grasp on each other’s hand.

“Where did they go?” Geralt shouted over the noise, choking on the smoke that seared its way into his nostrils and lungs and on the smells of fear permeating from everyone around them. 

“I…Follow me, I’ll take you to the nearest tunnel entrance,” Yennefer responded, eyes wide and face ashen with genuine fright. “Shye, get to safety. I will meet you.”  
Her wife hesitated. 

“Now!” Yennefer yelled, shoving her into the hands of one of the fleeing stagehands, catching his eye as she did. “Get her out of here. Or else,” she threatened. 

“This is bullshit! I’m coming with you!” Shye snapped, fighting against the muscular grip around her shoulders. “I can take care of myself! And Jaskier is my friend too!”

The stagehand tugged her in the opposite direction, nodding to Yennefer in confirmation that he would follow her orders and keep Shye safe until her return.

And then the witch and witcher were off. 

“Geralt, I’m sorry,” she said, as she led the way swiftly through empty side passages. “I had no idea this would happen. But I…”

“I know Yen,” he said, knowing how it felt to love someone so much that nothing else mattered to you but their safety and happiness. “Just tell me what you can about how to beat him first.”

“That’s the problem. We abandoned our watch because we were arrogant and didn’t care, but we bound the creature in the first place because we didn’t know how to destroy it. I still haven’t found a solution; I even asked Tissaia. She couldn’t give me anything, or wouldn’t. But it has a physical form now, a vessel. That might be enough to make a difference…”

She fumbled with a set of keys at her waist, unlocking the small door she had brought them to, almost hidden in the stone wall. 

Geralt sighed. Maybes never sat well with him. 

“Whatever you do, remember: his first choice of attack seems to be strangulation. Stay on your guard; don’t let him get the jump on you. Be careful.” She stared at him, regret and guilt and love and concern all dancing in her violet eyes. “If you keep your arm up, at the level of your eyes, it will make it harder for him to get a noose around your throat…”

He nodded. “Thank you. Now go, look after your wife. You deserve to be happy, finally. I’ll finish this alone.”

“You deserve to be happy too, Geralt. Go save him.”

She startled them both by pulling him into a brief, bruisingly tight hug before turning to stride swiftly back the way they’d come. 

Geralt loosened his silver sword in its sheath and briefly considered an elixir before taking up a nearby lantern and heading into the plunging darkness.

~

Valdo held Jaskier’s arm in a crushing grip, tugging the bard by the elbow down through the twisting catacombs, no matter how hard he struggled and pleaded to get free. The chill air caused clouds of mist from both their panting breaths. 

“I spent years bound to this place, unable to leave, to interact. Starving and alone. Precious Yennefer and her little mage friends saw to that after they failed at using me for what they sought,” the Phantom spat, already frightening visage twisted horribly in hatred. 

“One day, someone stumbled into my prison, as desperate as I was, for different reasons. He was bloodied and beaten, horribly burnt and teetering on the precipice of death. He needed to be saved, and I needed to be freed. So we made a deal.”

Jaskier frowned, puzzling through both what was being said and why this creature wearing Valdo’s skin was telling him any of it. 

“Unfortunately, with as weak as he was and the way my power was restrained by the lingering spells, our shared solution was limited and took a great deal of energy. So we waited. And then you came along.”

They had arrived once more at the Phantom’s lair, now darkened and menacing as Jaskier glanced around, expecting to find some evil thing waiting, unable to spot much from the dim light of the torch in the other man’s hand. 

~

“I’m not going to wait around and do nothing!” Shye snapped, running her hands anxiously through her hair as she paced the small room. “I’m shocked that you’d ask that of me Yen, or that you’re willing to.”

“I’ve done my part. The rest of the story isn’t ours,” the sorceress said, casting sad eyes in her wife’s direction.

“What does that even mean Yennefer?!”

“It means that I’m not going to risk losing you. Not when the story is controlled by Destiny.”

“It’s not a story! It’s people’s lives. Our friends’ lives! We have to do something.”

Yennefer sighed, rubbing her hands across her face, exhausted and frustrated. “The outcome is determined. Our involvement won’t make a difference.”

“Then there’s no reason not to get involved.” Shye planted her hands on her hips with a stubborn expression that said that she thought she’d already won.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I have never known you to bow to Destiny’s whims, Yen. And if you start now, when it’s so dire, I’m not sure you’re the woman I married.” Shye’s face softened with sadness and desperation. “Please, help me help them.”

The two sat, eyes locked, in silence as the minutes dragged on. One begged for the other not to give up and one begged for peace. Finally, Yennefer sighed.

“Okay. We’ll go,” she said, closing her eyes in short prayer that she was making the right decision. “But we’re not going with the crowd that’s gearing up to storm in with torches and pitchforks. And we’re not going to fight.”

Shye froze midway through strapping on a sword and sheath to her waist. “What do you mean?”

“We’re not going after the Phantom. Not directly.”

“Then what, pray tell, are we doing?” Shye couldn’t keep the annoyance out of her voice.

“There are things I haven’t said about the Phantom, my love. And I hope that you won’t think less of me when I tell you…”

Shye stood in stunned silence as Yennefer told her tale, her face a war of conflicting emotions. 

“I appreciate you telling me all this,” she said when her wife was done. “But what does it have to do with the immediate situation?”

“There may be some elements of the binding left that I can, use. But while I work, I’ll need you watching my back, if you’re willing.” Her tone was pleading, and Shye’s heart broke at her vulnerability.

“Always, Yen.”

~

“You may as well make yourself comfortable Jaskier,” the Phantom drawled once he had lit more torches and candles about the underground room. “You’ll be here for a very long time.”

“I’m fine, thanks. The only thing that would make me comfortable is if you let me go,” Jaskier snapped peevishly.

“Well that’s not happening,” the Phantom chuckled. “I’m as familiar with you as Valdo was, little Songbird. I know it’s chafing at you to have your costume so…done up.”

“Not really.”

“At least unbutton the doublet,” the Phantom’s eyes held a sparkle that made Jaskier’s pulse jump and a familiar nervous excitement rush through him. “Humor me.”

Caught between defiance and fear of repercussion, Jaskier unbuttoned the top few buttons, instantly feeling more like himself instead of a character he was playing. He sighed and sat on the edge of the jetty, one leg tucked up beneath him and the toe of his boot dragging on the water.

“Happy now?” he asked.

The Phantom looked up from the chest he was riffling through and smiled coldly.

“Why are you doing this?” Jaskier asked after a long pause. “Why me?”

“I have occupied this vessel for several years, and it has not recovered fully from the damage done to it when the city was sacked. And its original owner was _annoying._ Constantly _nagging_ at me, makes it hard to focus.”

Jaskier couldn’t help but laugh. Of course even when possessed by a powerful and malevolent being, Valdo was still…being Valdo. 

“Then when you came to the music hall, he recognized you, and his infatuation caught my attention. I indulged my curiosity, and saw that you were stronger, more useful. I had intended to discard this mangled corpse, especially when I realized that your voice is powerful, far more so than this one ever was. We could have been truly _irresistible._ But first I wanted to test you, push you to your limit, beyond your breaking point. The hunt is fun, but I enjoy it so much more when my prey comes to me.”

Jaskier nodded, absorbing every piece of information the Phantom let slip, hoping that something there could help him escape, or could be communicated to Geralt to help him stop this creature. 

“His persistent desire for you proved to be one of several complications. I couldn’t tell who wanted you more, or in what way we wanted you sometimes. But it hardly matters now.”

“What do you mean?” Jaskier felt the level of his voice rise in a panic. 

The Phantom merely chuckled, stalking down the stairs into the shadows of the lair. Jaskier’s eye caught on movement, just barely a shadow itself, near the door. 

“Geralt!” he cried out. “Don’t! It’s a trap!”

The Phantom lunged.

~

Shye looked around the small, circular chamber in awe. The damp stone walls were covered in mysterious symbols that, even burnt out, radiated a sense of power. Scorch marks marred other parts of the walls and the ceiling and the floor was scratched, deep wounds in the wood that didn’t quite look as random as they should have if they were claw marks. And standing in the center of it all, was Yennefer. Something about her seemed to waver, as if she was somehow not real or perhaps she was the only thing that was real and the rest of the room was not. 

Yennefer looked around the familiar chamber, taking in the destruction that had occurred since she had last been down here. Some of it had obvious cause, magic fizzling from marks of power over time, burns from a demonic temper tantrum probably intended to bring the building down but too weak to do so. Her violet eyes roamed restlessly, searching for something, anything that could be used against the creature now. She traced the marks on the floor: additional containment glyphs carved directly over the summoning circle, hastily scraped away to release its prisoner but not completely gone. The layers of traps had been Sabrina’s idea, ever the strategist, ever the fighter. And perhaps that was enough to save them.

“Shye,” Yennefer called her wife over. “I need you to retrace these symbols,” she indicated the ones she needed on the walls, “while I perform a spell. They’ll act like a net. Or actually more like a fishing rod. Wherever the spirit is, it will start pulling it back here and hold it until we can come up with something more permanent. We have to get our timing perfect though or it could backfire and release it completely instead. If we do that…the damage done so far will be a pinprick in comparison.”

Shye nodded, picking up a piece of charcoal that had been discarded in the doorway. 

“No, since it will just be my magic, we’ll need to rely more on the stability of the glyphs. The harder they are to destroy the better.”

“I don’t know if my dagger is strong enough to carve into stone, Yen, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“The necklace I gave you might be,” she said, nodding to the diamond pendant around her wife’s neck with a slight shrug.

“Okay,” Shye took a deep breath as she placed the point of the gemstone against the stone. “Let’s do this.”

~

“Well well, it seems I’ve caught the great White Wolf after all,” Valdo hissed, wiping bloodied hands on a cloth and approaching Geralt who strained against his bonds. “Don’t try to fight it.”

“Let him go,” the witcher growled.

“You’re hardly in a position to make demands.”

“I am asking you to let him go. This doesn’t have to end in bloodshed.” Jaskier could tell by the flashing of Geralt’s eyes that he didn’t mean that, but he appreciated the attempt anyway. 

Valdo, on the other hand, merely laughed.

“I don’t need to cow to your threats. You’re not strong enough to beat me. We’re equally matched at the best of times, and you aren’t at your best. You’re tired, injured. The poison is coursing through your veins. Even if it won’t kill you, it gives me the distinct upper hand. The only one that can save you from death is him. So, what do you think Jaskier?”

“Wh…what? Valdo, please,” Jaskier begged, hoping to get through to the man underneath, now that he knew there was a difference.

“Make your choice.” Valdo’s voice was a venomous hiss. 

“What choice? What option do I have?”

“Agree to give your life to me, and I will let him go.” He held up a hand impatiently to prevent Jaskier from interrupting him. “Or I condemn your lover.”  
The last word turned into a snarl as Valdo yanked harder on the rope around Geralt’s neck, jerking his head up and back. Unable to resist the suddenness of it, Geralt let out a choked gasp and Jaskier felt tears beginning to build up in his eyes.

“Please don’t do this.”

“Oh my minx, my Songbird. _You_ did this.” Valdo’s voice tread a fragile thread between affection and cruelty. 

“By what?” Geralt scoffed through gritted teeth, “existing? Rejecting you? What could Jaskier have possibly done to justify murder?”

“The murderer here is you, witcher. Or that’s what the mob will say. They’ll never find poor Jaskier’s body because I’ll be using it, but they’ll find you. And this pathetic vessel once I’ve discarded it. Just one more dead body, of a once beloved performer. The Butcher of Blaviken strikes again.”

“That makes no sense! They saw you, they know what you are now.”

“In the chaos of the fire? I don’t think they did. People believe the easiest story, the one that doesn’t make them look harder.”

“So you’re saying either you’re going to kill Geralt or you’re going to send him to prison and probably execution?” Jaskier interrupted. “And probably going to either kill me or steal my body anyway. There’s no point in me choosing then is there?”

“You never were a good listener,” Valdo sighed irritatedly. “I don’t have to frame him. I don’t want to frame him. He means nothing. I am merely laying out what could happen if you refuse me, or if you choose to surrender and he tries to interfere. Now, I’m running out of patience. Make a choice, or I’ll do it for you.”

“Fuck,” Geralt muttered. His eyes sought Jaskier’s. “I’m sorry. I failed. He wins either way. There is nothing I can do.”

There was a smug smile on Valdo’s face. Jaskier looked between the two men, the noose around Geralt’s neck cutting deeper and deeper by the second, the other end wrapped around Valdo’s fist. 

“I don’t…I…why are you doing this? I would have helped you if you’d asked me. I might have come to you willingly. I certainly could have fallen back in…” Jaskier cut himself off, wrenching back a sob.

“Jaskier, take the option that gets you out safely,” Geralt ordered, voice steady as he watched his beloved hesitate. “There is no point to both of us getting killed.”

Jaskier flinched at the words. Silence hung in the air, save for the ragged breaths of the room’s occupants and the gentle slosh of water against the stones.

Suddenly, a strange expression crossed the Phantom’s face.

“Jaskier,” there was a gentleness to the tone that, even in his most enticing moments, he had never used toward the bard before, one that called to mind memories of sunlight through stained glass and the musty smell of old books, the warmth of fireplace bricks pressed against skin through thin shirts and the softness of fingertips and lips and curls brushing skin. 

“Listen to me Jaskier,” he pleaded. “I don’t know how it happened, but the spirit’s hold is weakening. There’s not much time though. Kill us. If you do that while whatever magic is exerting its force right now, I think it’ll destroy the thing completely.”

“What?!”

“There isn’t time for questions, and I don’t have answers. Do as I say. Unless you want this thing to win instead.”

“But…what about you Valdo?”

“I’m dead either way. I should have been dead a long time ago.” 

Jaskier turned to glance at Geralt, hoping for some sign that what Valdo said wasn’t true. Or a willingness to just leave, even if that wasn’t fair to anyone involved or who might suffer for it. Instead, all he found was guilt and sorrow trapped in amber.

“Please,” he whispered one more time. “There must be another way, a way for all of us to get what we want. Please.”

“We can’t all walk away from this,” the other bard said softly, turning his head dramatically, looking up at the ceiling. “Well, I did always fancy myself the tragic hero.” His voice cracked, betraying him as he tried at nonchalance. 

Hands shaking, Jaskier picked up the long, thin dagger from the piano bench, still coated in Geralt’s blood, and clutched it tightly. 

“You’re sure?” he asked. 

“Quickly. I can feel the spirit struggling. The magic won’t last much longer.”

Tears rolled down Jaskier’s cheeks as he approached Valdo. 

“Gods give me courage,” he whispered, reaching up to brush the scraggly curls out of the other man’s face, cupping his cheek tenderly. “How did we come to this?”

He bit his lip as he struggled to meet those heartbreaking green eyes. He felt a hand clench around his heart as he leaned in to press his lips to Valdo’s scarred and broken ones. Long, damp eyelashes tickled his face as the other man embraced him, drawing him closer. A part of him didn’t want to ever let go.

He felt the sickening catch of metal hitting bone and pulled away, the dagger protruding from Valdo’s breast sliding from his grasp. A hand reached up to gently brush along his face, wiping at tears pooled in his blue eyes and when he looked up from the growing blossom of red, he was struck dumb by the look of gratitude and relief in Valdo’s eyes.

“Go,” Valdo whispered as the pair sank to the ground in each other’s arms. “Leave me. They’ll get what they want. And end to the Phantom. Forget me and go. Promise me never to tell anyone the truth you know about me, but go.”

Jaskier shook his head, a sob tearing from his throat. “No. I won’t leave you to die alone.”

Geralt’s hand slipped around his, trying to pull him to his feet.

“He’s right. We need to go,” the gruff voice was apologetic. 

“No! No. I…I can’t.”

“Take care of him, witcher,” Valdo sighed, looking past Jaskier to meet molten gold eyes. 

They heard the sound of voices, echoing off the tunnels, impossible to tell how close they were. 

“Go now!” Valdo shouted, using what strength he had left to shove Jaskier away.

“I love you,” he whispered as he watched their retreating backs disappear down a tunnel and slumped down onto the steps leading to the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The End.
> 
> It's been a _wild_ ride y'all.


	14. Learn to be Lonely

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't planning to do an epilogue. And yet...here we are.

It was years before the witcher and the bard passed through the walls of the city again, on a rainy almost-winter morning.

“Shall we go see a show, for old time’s sake?” Jaskier asked, teasing laugh quickly transitioning to a bone-rattling cough that jarred Geralt, who rode behind with arms wrapped around his frail body.

“We’re going to a healer,” Geralt growled. “And if they can’t help, to the mage. She owes us.”

“I don’t know,” Jaskier mused, turning his face up and brushing fever-heated lips across the stubble of his lover’s jaw. “I think we can forgive Yennefer’s debt. She brought us together after all.”

“If we’re crediting others for our relationship, we owe that to Valdo fucking Marx.”

Jaskier’s eyes flitted away from Geralt’s face at that, his sinking back into his memories of the man, and the monster. There were days, Geralt knew, when Jaskier imagined that the red of the other bard’s blood still stained his hands. Guilt gnawed at the witcher for bringing it up again, especially here, especially now. Regret and guilt should have been the last things on Jaskier’s mind. 

Another coughing fit took Jaskier, nearly shaking him from Roach’s back, and Geralt had to cling to him as he wheezed and struggled to breathe long after it was over.   
Spurring Roach to go a little faster, not caring in his urgency if the crowds managed to move out of the horse’s way, Geralt couldn’t keep his eyes off of the very real spots of red now on Jaskier’s hands, mirroring the spectral ones in his mind. 

~

There was too much sun on the day of the funeral. Its light, watery and weak as it was, seemed to smile down on the mourners, blissfully unaware of their pain. 

Geralt’s back was hunched as if he bore a burden he could never set aside. Yennefer was the least put-together he had ever seen her, managing to look weary, even as she stood rod straight, eyes gazing off into the middle distance and betraying the almost ancient wisdom within her. Only Y/N actually cried, eyes red-rimmed and raw from the fact that she hadn’t stopped in the nearly three days since her best friend’s passing. The trio walked side by side down the lane back toward the city.

“What will you do now Geralt?” Y/N asked, her voice small but impossibly loud in the stillness around them.

He shrugged. He hadn’t actually spoken a word since Jaskier’s passing, almost afraid that if he tried all that would come out would be his wails of anguish. He felt like a part of himself had died, and he honestly didn’t have an answer for how he would carry on.

~

That night, Yennefer found Geralt packing his bag.

“Leave so soon Witcher?” she asked, voice low. “I hope you were at least planning to say goodbye?”

Geralt stared down at the shirt in his hands, not really seeing the soft blue material with its lace-trimmed collar. His fingers moved in a familiar rhythm, almost automatic, like breathing (was he still breathing?), folding neatly. Jaskier always wanted his shirts folded neatly. He never did get over that primness and adjust to life on the road (he never would). 

“Of course,” Geralt muttered gruffly. “Saying goodbye is the one thing I’m good at.”

Yennefer stepped further into the room, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Where will you go?”

“Back to The Path. Where I belong.”

“Alone?”

“I’ll have Roach.”

“Geralt…” she sighed, closing her violet eyes. 

“Don’t Yen. All your wit and clever words aren’t going to fix this one.”

The two of them stood together for a while in silence.

“I think he was there you know,” Geralt said suddenly, breaking the spell over the two of them. “At the funeral.”

“Who?”

“Valdo Marx. There was a…shadow. It wasn’t a wraith, not solid enough for that. Just a shadow.”

“Why didn’t you say anything? One of us could have done something about it.”

He shrugged. “He loved Jaskier as well and as long as I did, why shouldn’t he have been there?”

~

In the morning, when Y/N awoke, the bed beside her was cold, and she found her wife sitting alone in the kitchen, a cup of tea gone cold in her hand. 

“He left didn’t he?” she asked. 

Yennefer nodded, “Before dawn.”

“Do you think we’ll see him again?”

Yennefer was paused, her violet eyes wistful. “No. I don’t think we will.”


End file.
